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GIFT   OF 

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HISTORY   OF 
THE    UNITED    STATES 


BY 

EMERSON  DAVID  FITE,  PH.D. 

FREDERICK  FERRIS   THOMPSON  PROFESSOR   OF   POLITICAL   SCIENCE   IN 

VASSAR   COLLEGE,    AUTHOR   OF    "SOCIAL  AND    INDUSTRIAL 

CONDITIONS  DURING  THE   CIVIL  WAR,"   "  THE 

PRESIDENTIAL  CAMPAIGN   OF    1860" 


WITH  MAPS  AND  ILLUSTRATIONS 


SECOND  EDITION,   REVISED     , 


NEW   YORK 
HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT,     1916,     1919,    BY 
HENRY    HOLT    AND     C  O  M  P  A  N 


PREFACE 

IN  teaching  American  history,  whether  in  the  secondary  school  or 
in  the  college,  there  are  many  problems  in  connection  with  the  division 
of  the  subject,  method  of  treatment,  and  emphasis.  It  has  been  my 
aim,  in  this  short  history,  to  add  my  contribution  toward  the  solution 
of  some  of  these  problems  from  the  practical  standpoint  of  one  who 
has  had  many  years  of  experience  both  as  teacher  and  as  examiner, 
acquainted  in  the  first  capacity  with  the  difficulty  of  presenting  the 
subject,  and  in  the  second,  with  the  unsatisfactory  results  often 
obtained. 

Some  of  the  subjects  of  special  emphasis  in  the  present  volume  are, 
in  the  period  of  exploration  and  discovery,  the  development  of  geo 
graphical  knowledge;  and  in  the  (colonial  period  the  dependence  of 
events  in  the  colonies  upon  contemporary  English  history,  and  the 
close  connection  between  the  West  Indies  and  the  mainland  as  parts 
of  the  same  colonial  empire.  Less  space  than  usual  has  been  given 
to  military  history,  the  attempt  being  to  present  the  broad  outlines 
of  campaigns,  the  general  plans  with  their  successes  and  failures, 
rather  than  descriptions  of  battles  in  detail;  while  the  social  and  in 
dustrial  dejvelorjmerit  of  the  country,  ecojiojiiic__pr^gTes^s^C)urces  and 
effects  of  immigration,  ^onditions"'on  the  eve^recediri^  frontier,  and 
changes~rri  governmental  forms7T>oth  national  and  local,  have  received 
special  attention.  The  peace  movement  and  foreign  relations,  par 
ticularly  the  Pan-American  movement,  have  been  stressed.  Recent 
history,  which  is  often  slighted  for  the  period  since  1865,  occupies 
more  than  one-fourth  of  the  book,  a  large  share  being  devoted  to  the 
period  since  1900.  In  fact,  one  of  the  objects  of  the  book,  constantly 
kept  in  mind,  has  been  to  introduce  the  student  to  present-day  condi 
tions  and  problems. 

I  desire  to  recognize  my  debt  of  gratitude  to  my  colleagues,  Pro 
fessors  Hill  and  Shattuck  for  various  illustrations,  and  Professor 
Bracq,  for  permission  to  use  his  original  Hondius-Mercator  map; 
to  Archibald  Freeman  of  Phillips  Academy,  Andover,  Massachusetts, 
who  has  lately  read  the  entire  manuscript  in  its  completed  form  and 
offered  much  valuable  criticism;  and  to  my  wife,  whose  criticism 
and  aid  at  every  stage  of  the  work  has  been  a  constant  source  of 
inspiration  and  profit. 

46223^        EMERSON  DAVID   FIXE 


CONTENTS 


PART  I 
THE  NEW  WORLD 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  DISCOVERY  AND  EXPLORATION      i 

II.  THE  NATIVE  AMERICANS  AND  THEIR  COUNTRY 22 

PART  II 
THE  EUROPEAN  COLONIES 

III.  SPANISH  AND  PORTUGUESE  AMERICA 29 

IV.  ENGLISH  AMERICA  UNDER  QUEEN  ELIZABETH  AND  THE  EARLY  STUART 

KINGS,  1558-1642 33 

V.  DUTCH,  SWEDISH,  DANISH,  AND  RUSSIAN  AMERICA 6.1 

VI.  ENGLISH  AMERICA.     INFLUENCE  OF  THE  UPRISING  OF  THE  ENGLISH 

PURITANS,  1642-1660 67 

VII.   ENGLISH  AMERICA  UNDER  THE  LATER  STUART  KINGS,  1660-1688    .  69 
VIII.  ENGLISH  AMERICA.     INFLUENCE  OF  THE  ENGLISH  REVOLUTION  OF 

1688 79 

IX.  FRENCH  AMERICA 83 

X.  BRITISH  AND  FRENCH  AMERICA 88 

PART  III 
THE  REVOLT  OF  THE   BRITISH   COLONIES 

XI.  BRITISH  AMERICA  IN  1763      98 

XII.  THE  RISE  OF  POLITICAL  DISCONTENT 117 

XIII.  THE  WAR  OF  INDEPENDENCE 143 

PART  IV 

ORGANIZATION    OF   THE    UNITED    STATES    OF    AMERICA 
1781-1801 

XIV.  THE  FAILURE  OF  THE  ARTICLES  OF  CONFEDERATION,  1781-1789     .     166 
XV.  THE  SUCCESS  OF  THE  NEW  CONSTITUTION,  1789-1801 179 

PART   V 
NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT,   1801-1841 

XVI.  JEFFERSONIAN  DEMOCRACY 207 

XVII.   THE  WAR  OF  1812 220 

XVIII.   REACTION  AGAINST  NATIONALISM      246 

XIX.  JACKSONIAN  DEMOCRACY 268 

vii 


viii  CONTENTS 

PART   VI 

AN  ERA  OF  TERRITORIAL   EXPANSION  AND    CONTINUED 
SECTIONAL   STRIFE,    1841-1865 

XX.   THE  MEXICAN  ANNEXATIONS  AND  OTHER  PHASES  OF  EXPANSION  .  297 

XXI.   THE  QUARREL  OVER  SLAVERY  IN  THE  TERRITORIES 317 

XXII.   SECESSION ^4I 

XXIII.   THE  CIVIL  WAR    . 


350 


PART   VII 
AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL   DEVELOPMENT 

XXIV.   ECONOMIC  RECONSTRUCTION  ..........    ........  393 

XXV.   POLITICAL  RECONSTRUCTION  ..................  4II 

XXVI.   AGRARIAN  AND  INDUSTRIAL'  UNREST    .......    .    ......  426 

XXVII.  PROSPERITY,  PANIC,  AND  SLOW  RECOVERY     ...........  445 

PART   VIII 
A  WORLD   POWER 

XXVIII.   THE  UNITED  STATES  IN  WORLD  POLITICS  ............  476 

XXIX.  PROGRESSIVE  DEMOCRACY  ...................  504 

XXX.  THE  GREAT  WAR  ..................  530 

APPENDIX 

I.  DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE  .............  555 

II.  CONSTITUTION  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES      ..........  558 

III.  WAR  MESSAGE  OF  PRESIDENT  WILSON      ....     ......  573 

IV.  BOOK  LISTS        ...................  580 

INDEX                     ......................  583 


LIST    OF    ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 

Christopher  Columbus      2 

The  Ships  of  Columbus 7 

Balboa  Taking   Possession  of   the 

Pacific  Ocean      12 

The  Half  Moon      17 

An  Indian  Village 23 

Sir  Francis  Drake 34 

Drake's     "Pelican"     or     "Golden 

Hind"      35 

Sir  Walter  Raleigh 36 

John  Smith     39 

Jamestown,  Va.,  in  1622 41 

The     Brewster     House,     Scrooby, 

England 44 

The  First  Thanksgiving  Dinner  .    .  47 
The  Barker  House   at  Pembroke, 

Massachusetts 48  ' 

John  Winthrop       49 

Statue  of  Roger  Williams.    ....  51 
The  Stadt  Huys,  First  City  Hall  in 

New  York 62 

New  Amsterdam,  about  1630  ...  63 

Peter  Stuyvesant 64 

William  Penn 76 

Samuel  de  Champlain 84 

The  First  Building  in  Quebec,  1608       85 
Franklin's    Device    to    Encourage 
Union,  first  used  in  the  Pennsyl 
vania  Gazette 91 

Benjamin  Franklin 92 

Quebec 94 

Colonial  Stage 99 

Growth  of  a.  Pioneer  Home      ...  105 

New  York  Harbor no 

Harvard  College,  1788 112 

British  Stamp 119 

George  III 122 

The  Boston  Massacre 1 24 

The  Minute  Man       128 

Daniel  Boone      134 

Independence  Hall,  Philadelphia    .  139 

Franklin  at  the  Court  of  France.    .  149 

Continental  Money IS1 


PAGE 

Ohio  Flatboat  with  Superstructure 

of  Rough  Lumber 153 

John  Paul  Jones 154 

John  Andre 156 

The  Surrender  of  York  town     ...  160 

Fraunces'  Tavern,  New  York      .    .  163 

John  Adams 169 

The  Start  of  the  Ohio   Company 
from  Ipswich,  Massachusetts,  for 

Marietta,  Ohio 172 

Mount  Vernon 180 

Washington 181 

New  York's  Second  City  Hall,  Fed 
eral  Hall 182 

Thomas  Jefferson       183 

Alexander  Hamilton      184 

Mrs.  Washington's  First  Reception  190 

An  Early  Frontier  Fort  in  Ohio  .    .  193 
Medal  Struck  for  the  Voyage  of  the 

"Columbia" 200 

John  Marshall 209 

James  Madison 220 

Henry  Clay 221 

U.  S.  Frigate  Constitution  —  "  Old 

Ironsides" 225 

Whitney's  Cotton  Gin 233 

The  "Clermont" 236 

First  Steamboat  from  Pittsburgh  to 

New  Orleans 237 

Picking  Cotton,  near  Atlanta,  Ga.  238 

Cincinnati  in  1810     , 230 

Overland  Travel 241 

Typical  Log  Cabin 242 

Mail  Carrier  about  1800 243 

John  Quincy  Adams   - 251 

John  C.  Calhoun 260 

Canal  Boat  in  1825 263 

"De  Witt  Clinton"  and  Train.    .    .  265 

Andrew  Jackson 268 

Daniel  Webster 270 

Chicago  in  1832      .    .  - 280 

A  Factory  Town  in  1838  (Lowell, 

Mass.)      283 


IX 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 

The  Original  McCormick  Reaper    .  284 

William  Lloyd  Garrison     ....  288 

Martin  Van  Buren 292 

Astoria  in  1813 300 

Mission  San  Francisco  de  la  Espada, 

San  Antonio,  Texas 305 

Slitter's  Mill 310 

Old    Prairie    Schooner    and    Stage 

Coach  of  First  Days  in  West  .     .  311 

William  H.  Seward 322 

Stephen  A.  Douglas 327 

Sources  of  English  Cotton  Imports 

in  1860 345 

Abraham  Lincoln 350 

Fort  Sumter 352 

Ericsson's  Monitor.    Side  Elevation  360 

The  Monitor  and  the  Merrimac.     .  360 

Wendell  Phillips 364 

Horace  Greeley         365 

President  Lincoln  and  his  Cabinet 
discussing  the  Emancipation  Proc 
lamation  366 

Not  According  to  the  Constitution.  370 
An  Argument  for  the  Use  of  Negro 

Soldiers 371 

William  T.  Sherman 378  , 

Birthplace  of  Abraham  Lincoln  .     .  382 

Ulysses  S.  Grant 383 

Jefferson  Davis 384 

Robert  E.  Lee 385 


PAGE 

The  Completion  of  the  Union  Pacific 
and  Central  Pacific  Railroad  .  .  397 

Thomas  A.  Edison 402 

Wagon  Train  across  the  Plains  .     .     403 
A  Trial  by  the  Klu  Klux  Klan  .     .    417 

Grover  Cleveland 436 

Pan-American  Building,  Washing 
ton,  D.  C 456 

William  McKinley 467 

The  Battleship  "Maine"  Entering 

Havana  Harbor 472 

Theodore  Roosevelt 479 

Woodrow  Wilson 480 

Per  Cent  Distribution  of  Foreign- 
Born  Population,  1910  ....     506 
Increase  of  Population  in  the  United 
States  and  the  Principal  Countries 
of  Europe:  1800-1910    ....     510 
A  Modern  Meat-Packing  Plant .     .     515 

John  Mitchell 518 

John  J.  Pershing        540 

The  Foreign  Trade  of  the  United 

States 544 

Marshal  Foch,  Clemenceau,  Lloyd- 
George,  Orlando,  Sonnino,  at  the 

Peace  Conference 549 

King  George  V,  Admiral  Sims,  and 
captain  of  American  Baseball 
Team 551 


LIST  OF  MAPS 

Joliet's  Map  of  New  France Facing  page  xii 

The  World  According  to  Toscanelli 3 

Columbus's  First  Voyage 8 

Routes  of  Discoveries     . 10 

Atlantic  Discoveries 15 

The  Western  Hemisphere,  by  Henry  Hondi us,  1630 19 

Early  New  England 46 

Early  Virginia  and  Maryland 57 

European  Provinces,  1655 Facing  page  68 

North  America  in  1713        89 

The  British  Colonies,  1760 95 

North  America  in  1763 96 

The  Thirteen  American  Colonies  in  1775 Facing  page  126 

Boston  and  Vicinity 13° 

The  West  Indies Facing  page  132 

Seat  of  War  in  the  West,  1775-1783 Facing  page  134 

Campaign  in  Middle  States 144 

Capture  and  Evacuation  of  Philadelphia 146 

Burgoyne's  Campaign 14? 

Revolution  in  the  Southern  States 157 

Washington's  Movement  to  Yorktown 159 

The  United  States  at  the  Peace  of  1783 Facing  page  162 

Operations  along  the  Canadian  Border 224 

Operations  around  Washington 227 

Expedition  against  New  Orleans 228 

The  Cumberland  Road 235 

The  Oregon  Country      .     .     . 301 

The  Trails  to  Oregon  and  California 302 

The  Mexican  War 3°6 

The  Missions  and  Chapels  of  California 307 

Territorial  Growth  of  the  United  States Facing  page  308 

The  United  States  in  1860 Facing  page  348 

Fort  Sumter  and  Charleston  Harbor •     •  353 

Battle  of  Bull  Run 354 

Operations  in  the  West       358 

Capture  of  New  Orleans 359 

McClellan's  Peninsular  Campaign 361 

First  Invasion  of  the  North 362 

Second  Invasion  of  the  North 367 

The  Vicksburg  Campaign 368 

Murfreesboro  to  Atlanta 369 

Operations  in  the  East 3?6 

Sherman's  March 379 

War-Time  Railroad  Map  of  the  Confederacy 39° 

Map  of  the  Philippine  Islands 473 

Territorial  Acquisitions  of  the  United  States Facing  page  482 

The  Western  Front,  1914-1915 531 

The  Eastern  Front 534 

The  Italian  Front 536 

The  Western  Front,  1918 538 

xi 


To  Monseigneur,  Count  Frontenac,  Councillor  of  the  King,  Governor  and  Lieuten 
ant-General  for  his  Majesty  in  Canada,  Acadia,  Newfoundland  and  in  the  country 
of  New  France. 

Monseigneur 

I  take  pleasure  in  presenting  to  you  this  map  which  will  enable  you  to  understand 
the  location  of  the  rivers  and  lakes  on  which  one  travels  through  Canada  or  North 
America,  which  is  more  than  1,200  leagues  from  East  to  West. 

That  great  river  (the  Mississippi)  beyond  Lake  Huron  and  Lake  Illinois  (or 
Michigan),  which  bears  your  name,  the  River  Buade,  since  it  was  discovered  in  these 
last  two  years,  1673  and  l674,  as  a  result  of  the  first  orders  you  gave  me  as  you  entered 
on  the  government  of  New  France,  flows  between  Florida  and  Mexico,  and  on 
its  way  to  the  sea  runs  through  the  most  beautiful  country  imaginable.  I  have 
seen  nothing  in  France  so  beautiful  as  the  abundance  of  fine  prairies  and  nothing  so 
pleasant  as  the  varieties  of  groves  and  forests  where  one  can  pick  plums,  pomegran 
ates,  lemons  and  several  small  fruits  which  are  not  found  in  Europe.  In  the  fields, 
quail  rise;  in  the  woods,  parrots  are  seen;  and  in  the  rivers  one  catches  fish  which 
cannot  be  identified  by  taste,  shape  or  size. 

Iron  mines  and  reddish  rocks,  never  found  except  with  copper,  are  not  rare,  like 
wise  slate,  saltpetre,  coal,  marble,  and  alloys  of  copper.  The  largest  pieces  of  copper 
that  I  saw  were  as  large  as  a  fist  and  free  from  impurities.  It  was  discovered  near 
the  reddish  rocks  which  are  much  like  those  of  France  and  numerous. 

All  the  savages  have  wooden  canoes,  fifty  feet  and  more  in  length;    they  do  not 

care  for  deer  as  food,  but  they  kill  buffalo,  which  roam  in  herds  of  thirty  or  fifty. 

I  have  myself  counted  400  on  the  banks  of  the  river,  and  turkeys  are  extremely  common. 

They  harvest  Indian  corn  generally  three  times  a  year,  and  they  have  watermelons 

for  refreshment  in  the  heat,  since  there  .is  no  ice  and  very  little  snow. 

One  of  the  great  rivers  running  into  the  Mississippi  from  the  West  gives  a  passage 
into  the  Gulf  of  California  (Mer  Vermeille).  I  saw  a  village  which  is  only  five  days' 
journey  from  a  tribe  which  trades  with  the  natives  of  California.  If  I  had  arrived 
two  days  earlier  I  could  have  talked  to  those  who  had  come  and  had  brought  four 
hatchets  as  a  present. 

The  description  of  everything  could  have  been  seen  in  my  diary,  if  the  good  fortune 
which  attended  me  all  through  the  journey  had  not  failed  me  a  quarter  of  an  hour 
before  arriving  at  the  place  from  which  I  had  departed.  I  had  escaped  the  dangers 
from  the  savages,  I  had  passed  forty  rapids  and  was  about  to  land  with  all  possible 
joy  over  the  success  of  such  a  long  and  difficult  undertaking  when  my  canoe  was 
overturned  and  I  lost  two  men  and  my  chest,  in  sight  of  and  at  the  doors  of  the  first 
French  houses  that  I  had  left  nearly  two  years  before.  Nothing  is  left  to  me  but  my 
life  and  the  desire  to  use  it  for  whatever  will  please  you. 

Monseigneur,  your  very  humble  and  obedient  servant  and  subject, 

xii  J°LIET 


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HISTORY  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES 


PART   I 
THE   NEW   WORLD 

CHAPTER   I 
DISCOVERY  AND   EXPLORATION 

IDEAS  AND  EVENTS  LEADING   UP  TO  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA 

FOR  centuries  before  Columbus  the  seas  which  stretched  away  from 
the  coasts  of  Europe  had  remained  an  expanse  of  mystery  and  wonder. 
Ships  had  crept  cautiously  out  upon  their  waters  and  back  Introduction 
again,  but  no  one  had  ventured  to  sail  away  from  land 
for  days  and  days,  with  no  signs  of  hope  from  the  apparently  limitless 
waste,  sustained  only  by  faith  in  his  own  enterprise,  until  Columbus 
dared,  and  solved  the  mystery.  In  view  of  the  results  that  have 
come  from  his  ventures,  his  may  be  accounted  the  greatest  dis 
covery  in  the  history  of  the  world.  Certainly  his  bold  incursions 
into  the  mystery  of  the  western  horizon  mark  the  beginning  of 
American  history. 

Rejecting  the  common  belief  that  the  world  was  flat,  Christopher 
Columbus  maintained  that  it  was  round  and  that  by  sailing  westward 
he  could  come  to  China  and  Japan  in  the  East.  Where  coiumbus's 

did  he  get  this  idea?  It  was  not  new,  for  the  Greeks  had  great  idea  and 
,  ,  ,  .  i  r  i  •  its  source 

held  it  two   thousand  years  before  him.     At   the  very    among  the 

dawn  of  Greek  civilization  Homer  had  asserted  that  the  early  Greeks- 
earth  was  wheel-shaped  and  flat,  surrounded  on  all  sides  by  the  ocean, 
beyond  which  was  mythland;  but  Aristotle,  in  the  fourth  century 
before  Christ,  noting  the  circular  shadow  of  the  earth  on  the  moon 
during  an  eclipse,  and  the  different  altitudes  of  the  North-  Star  at 
different  places,  reached  the  conclusion  that  the  earth  was  spherical, 
and  wrote  that  those  who  said  that  the  sea  was  one  from  Gibraltar  to 
India  "do  not  assert  things  very  improbable."  After  the  decline  of 
Greek  civilization,  the  idea  did  not  completely  die  out,  but  was  handed 
down  to  modern  times  through  the  Mohammedans,  from  whom  Colum 
bus  himself  may  have  derived  it  in  southern  Spain,  where  Mohammedan 


THE  NEW  WORLD 


Scientific 
data  in  Co- 
lumbus's  day 
concerning 
the  shape  of 
the  earth. 


civilization,  though  on  the  decline,  was  still  prevalent  in  his  day.  In 
the  thirteenth  century,  Roger  Bacon  in  England  gave  Aristotle's 
theory  a  place  in  Christian  literature  in  his  "Opus  Majus,"  and  his 
words  were  later  repeated  in  a  Latin  book  called  "Imago  Mundi," 
which  we  know  influenced  Columbus. 

From  1472  to  1492  Europe  saw  several  new  editions  of  Ptolemy's 
old  Greek  geography,  dating  from  the  second  century  after  Christ 
and  based  upon  the 
theory  that  the  world 
was  round.  In  Co- 
lumbus's  time,  too, 
the  modern  globe  was 
slowly  coming  into  use  to  repre 
sent  the  Greek  conception  of  the 
earth's  rotundity,  and  Columbus 
may  have  had  opportunity  to 
study  one  of  these,  or  possibly  he 
may  have  owned  one  himself. 
The  Behaim  globe  of  his  day  is 
still  in  existence.  Finally,  the 
Florentine  astronomer,  Toscanelli, 
to  whom  Columbus  wrote  for  ad 
vice,  furnished  him  with  geograph 
ical  data  based  on  the  Greek 
conception,  though  both  Behaim 
and  Toscanelli  underestimated  the 
size  of  the  earth  and  extended  the  continent  of  Asia  so  as  to  locate 
Cipango  (Japan)  about  as  far  from  Europe  as  is  in  actuality  the  Gulf 
of  Mexico. 

It  is  possible  that  Columbus  made  a  visit  to  Iceland  before  1492, 
or  that  he  talked  with  sailors  and  others  who  knew  the  Icelandic  sea 
Possible  sug-  tales.  These  tales,  called  sagas,  first  reduced  to  writing 
in  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries,  contained  an 
account  of  certain  old  Icelandic  or  Norse  sea  rovers,  who 
in  the  year  1000  or  thereabouts,  under  the  leadership  of 
Leif  Ericson,  made  a  long  ocean  journey  to  a  new  land 
west  and  south  of  Greenland,  where  they  found  fields  of  "self-sown" 
grain  and  grapevines  growing  wild.  This  land  they  named  Vinland. 
Since  there  is  but  one  land  west  and  south  of  Greenland,  scholars 
generally  believe  that  the  Northmen  reached  the  mainland  of  North 
America.  Here  to-day  on  the  Atlantic  coast  is  to  be  found  a  wild 
rice,  which  may  be  identified  with  the  grain  mentioned  in  the  sagas, 


CHRISTOPHER  COLUMBUS 


gestions  by 

the  Northmen 

concerning 

unknown 

western 

lands. 


DISCOVERY  AND  EXPLORATION 


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4  THE  NEW  WORLD 

and  here  to-day  wild  grapes  still  grow.  The  present  northern  limit 
of  both  the  rice  and  the  grapes  is  near  Nova  Scotia;  and  so,  some 
where  on  the  long  Atlantic  coast  south  of  Nova  Scotia,  we  conclude 
that  the  Northmen  made  their  landings,  though  at  what  spot  we  cannot 
tell.  Every  vestige  of  their  presence  on  these  shores  has  long  since 
disappeared.  So  much  for  the  Northmen,  who  have  left  no  mark  on 
American  history.  If  Columbus  heard  their  story,  he  found  in  it 
but  one  point  of  interest,  —  that  there  was  a  land  beyond  the  ocean 
to  be  reached  by  a  voyage  to  the  west.  As  for  cold  and  barren  Vinland, 
he  would  have  nothing  of  it.  He  was  eager  to  reach  another  and 
fairer  land,  described  by  a  great  traveler  whose  story  was  clearly 
authentic. 

This  traveler  was  Marco  Polo,  a  Venetian,  who  reached  Cathay, 
or    China,  by  a   long   overland  journey  from  Europe  in  the  latter 

part  of  the  thirteenth  century,  obtained  a  place  in  the 
Marco  Polo  s 
account  of  a      native  annals  ol  China — which  serves  to  verify  his  tale — • 

0*  an<^  returned  to  Europe  to  write  of  his  experiences.  In 
the  Columbian  library  at  Seville,  Spain,  there  is  a  book 
entitled  "The  Book  of  Ser  Marco  Polo,"  on  the  margin  of  which  are 
notes  in  the  handwriting  of  Columbus.  Two  things  in  the  story  partic 
ularly  interested  him.  First,  Polo  described  the  distant  coasts  which  he 
visited  as  washed  on  the  east  by  a  great  sea;  so,  reasoned  Columbus, 
if  there  was  an  ocean  east  of  this  land  and  if  the  earth  was  round,  this 
ocean  might  be  the  same  as  that  which  washed  the  shores  of  western 
Europe.  Second,  Polo  pictured  the  Asiatic  lands  and  the  near-by 
island  of  Cipango  (Japan)  as  abounding  in  palaces  with  roofs  and 
pavements  of  gold.  Columbus's  ambition  was  fired  to  sail  to  these 
eastern  countries  and  find  their  treasures.  His  first  questions  to 
the  natives  wherever  he  went  on  his  coming  voyages  were  always 
of  gold. 

In  these  early  days,  when  people  knew  little  of  the  art  of  modern 
cooking  and  still  less  of  modern  methods  of  preserving  food  from 
The  need  of  decay,  Europeans  were  wont  to  cover  up  rancid  tastes 
a  new  route  and  odors  in  their  food  by  the  use  of  spices,  which  were 
e  as '  imported  from  India  and  the  adjacent  islands.  Silks, 
gems,  precious  stones,  and  drugs  reached  Europe  from  the  same 
source.  One  of  the  routes  of  this  trade  ran  by  way  of  the  Black  and 
Caspian  Seas  and  one  through  Persia  and  the  Persian  Gulf,  but 
both  of  these  routes  were  closed  by  the_  Turkish  conquests  in  western 
Asia  and  eastern  Europe,  which  culminated  in  the  capture  of  Con 
stantinople  in  1453.  A  new  route  to  the  East  became  a  commercial 
necessity. 


DISCOVERY  AND  EXPLORATION  5 

As  this  need  became  apparent,  Portuguese  mariners,  under  the 
patronage   of  Prince   Henry   the  Navigator,   of   Portugal,   began   to 
explore   the   western   coast   of  Africa  in   the  hope   that    Long  voyages 
somewhere  in  its  extent  they  might  find  a  passage  through    in  his  own 
to  the  East.     They  reached  the  equator  in   1471,   and    gaveWpractical 

fifteen  years  later  the  very  southernmost  tip  of  land  and    hints  to  Co- 

J  ™,  .  lumbus. 

the  coast  beyond.  This  remarkable  voyage  was  accom 
plished  by  Bartholomew  Diaz,  whose  King,  in  speaking  of  the  results 
of  the  voyage,  exultingly  declared  that  Diaz  had  rounded  the  "Cape 
of  Good  Hope."  Continuing  in  the  same  way,  Vasco  da  Gama  actually 
reached  India  and  the  near-by  islands  in  1498,  and  the  prize  was  won. 
Columbus's  brother  was  with  Diaz  in  1486,  and  Columbus  himself 
may  have  been  on  one  such  voyage.  These  long  voyages  were  a  school 
of  practical  navigation,  in  which  mariners  first  learned  to  compile 
nautical  tables  and  to  compute  latitude  in  unknown  seas  by  the 
newly  discovered  astrolabe.  The  only  compass  in  use  was  a  mag 
netized  needle  set  on  a  straw  in  a  basin  of  water,  and  this  was  not 
very  sensitive. 

It  was  a  stirring  age  in  which  Columbus  lived.     Western  Europe 
was  the  scene  of  a  renaissance  or  re-birth  of  interest  in  art,  sculpture, 

and  architecture,  in  literature  and  science,  and  in  com- 

i  1-11  11  -n  IT  11        Columbus  as 

merce   and   geographical   knowledge.     Men   were   slowly    a  representa- 

casting  off  the  intellectual  torpor  of  the  Middle  or  Dark    £ve  °.f  the 
.  ,  .  i  ,,  ,  Renaissance. 

Ages  and  awakening  to  new  ideas  and  to  new  confidence 

in  their  OWTL  powers.  With  his  interest  in  the  Greek  ideas,  which  were 
a  characteristic  of  the  period,  with  his  mental  alertness,  his  enterprise, 
and  his  zest  for  investigation,  Columbus  was  a  striking  representative 
of  the  spirit  of  the  times. 

COLUMBUS,  CABRAL,  AND  CABOT 

By  1475,  when  he  was  about  thirty  years  old,  Columbus,  who  was 
a  native  of  Genoa,  Italy,  came  to  Lisbon,  Portugal,  determined  to 
devote  his  life  to  a  career  of  maritime  discovery.     He    Columbus's 
was  an  ardent  student  of  the  problems  of  the  seas,  and    preparation, 
toiled   year  after  year,   studying  maps,   sailors'   charts  and   stories, 
accounts  of  travels,  and  indeed  everything  connected  with  the  seas 
and  ships.     While  the  Portuguese  were  turning  their  prows  down 
the  coasts    of  Africa   in   search  of   the    Spice   Islan'ds   of   the   East, 
to  Columbus  the  East  lay  in  the  West  and  westward  he  proposed 
to  go. 

Several  of  the  leading  sovereigns  of  Europe,  including  Henry  VII  of 
England  and  Charles  VIII  of  France,  to  whom  he  applied  for  financial 

-• 


6  THE  NEW  WORLD 

assistance,  turned  him  aside  as  an  impractical  dreamer,  but  finally 
Queen  Isabella  of  Spain  came  to  his  assistance.  With  her  money, 
Columbus's  and  with  contributions  from  Columbus  himself  and  from 
first  voyage  to  the  seaport  town  of  Palos,  Spain,  three  small  ships,  the 
Santa  Maria,  the  Nina,  and  the  Pinta,  were  fitted  out; 
and  in  these,  on  Friday,  August  3,  1492,  in  defiance  of  superstition,  the 
little  expedition  of  ninety  men  set  sail  from  Palos.  The  flagship,  the 
Santa  Maria,  was  probably  only  sixty-three  feet  in  length  and  twenty 
in  width,  while  her  companion  ships-  were  still  smaller.  Even  with 
the  present  knowledge  of  the  seas,  few  would  dare  to  attempt  to  Cross 
the  Atlantic  in  ships  so  small.  The  Canary  Islands  were  reached  and 
left  behind  in  the  first  month.  In  the  unknown  seas  beyond,  the 
weather  proved  fair  and  the  voyage  easy;  but  the  comforting  land,  the 
sight  of  which  had  been  a  constant  solace  to  the  Portuguese  in  their 
long  southern  voyages,  receded  farther  and  farther,  perhaps  thousands 
of  miles,  and  in  terror  the  sailors  threw  Columbus's  theories  to  the 
winds,  mutinied,  and  demanded  to  go  back.  Columbus  alone  kept 
faith  in  the  quest,  and  he  kept  it  bravely.  Reward  came  one  moon 
light  night  in  October,  ten  weeks  after  the  expedition  had  set  out. 
For  several  hours  flocks  of  birds  and  floating  objects  in  the  sea  had 
been  noted,  which  seemed  to  indicate  the  near  approach  to  land;  and 
at  two  o'clock  in  the  morning  of  Friday,  October  12,  a  sandy  beach 
hove  in  sight,  which  in  devout  gratitude  Columbus  named  San  Salva 
dor,  or  Holy  Savior.  On  account  of  the  inaccurate  nautical  instru 
ments  in  use  and  consequent  mistakes  in  reckoning,  the  exact  location 
of  Columbus's  San  Salvador  cannot  now  be  determined.  It  was 
doubtless  one  of  the  Bahamas,  but  of  these  there  are  three  thousand. 
Columbus  believed  that  he  was  approaching  India,  and  gave  the  name 
Indians  to  the  strange  peoples  whom  he  found.  From  San  Salvador 
he  proceeded  to  Cuba,  and  there,  thinking  that  he  had  reached  Cipango, 
and  that  Cathay  was  near,  he  sent  off  an  interpreter  to  find  the  Great 
Khan,  the  ruler  of  Cathay,  and  to  deliver  to  him  a  letter  from  the 
Spanish  sovereigns,  Ferdinand  and  Isabella. 

After  further  explorations,  in  which  Hispaniola  (Haiti)  and  other 
West  Indian  islands  were  discovered,  Columbus  sailed  back  to  Spain, 
His  welcome  wnere  ne  received  an  enthusiastic  welcome.  As  proof 
home  and  of  his  story,  he  exhibited  to  the  astonished  people  of 
other  voyages.  gpam  sjx  natives  from  the  new  lands  and  many  curi 
ous  stuffed  birds  and  mammals.  On  a  second  voyage  in  1494 
he  founded  a  colony  in  Hispaniola;  on  a  third  in  1498  he  explored 
a  part  of  the  coast  of  South  America  and  the  mouth  of  the 
Orinoco  River,  thus  laying  the  foundation  of  Spain's  claim  to  that 


DISCOVERY  AND  EXPLORATION 


8 


THE  NEW  WORLD 


continent;   and  on  fris  fourth   and  last  voyage   in   1502   he  passed 
along  the  coast  of  Central  America. 

On  his  second  and  third  voyages  hundreds  of  Spaniards  flocked 
to  his  standard  and  freely  invested  their  fortunes  in  what  they  be- 
Unpopularity  lieved  would  be  a  paying  enterprise,  for  to  them  their 
of  Columbus  rivals,  the  Portuguese,  seemed  outdistanced  in  the  race 
days8  laSt  to  the  East,  and  rich  returns  seemed  sure.  In  point  of 
fact,  we  know  that  the  race  after  all  went  to  the  Portu 
guese,  who  brought  back  their  spice-laden  ships  to  Europe  in  1499, 
while  the  Spanish  hopes  of  gain  were  not  so  speedily  realized.  In 


t>UU         1000  2000  3000 

COLUMBUS'S  FIRST  VOYAGE 


their  chagrin  the  Spaniards  laid  the  blame  for  their  losses  on  Colum 
bus,  whom  they  denounced  as  a  cheat,  and  the  last  days  of  the  great 
discoverer,  until  his  death  in  1506,  were  spent  in  poverty  and  disgrace. 

Had  not  Columbus  reached  the  new  lands  when  he  did,  the  western 
continent  would  probably  have  been  discovered  eight  years  later  by 
Chance  dis-  mere  chance,  for  in  1500  a  Portuguese  expedition  of 
South7  °f  thirteen  ships,  under  the  command  of  Pedro  Alvarez  de 
America  by  Cabral,  bound  down  the  west  coast  of  Africa  for  the  Spice 
Cabrai.  Islands  of  the  East,  was  driven  from  its  course  across  the 

Atlantic  to  the  eastern  shores  of  Brazil.  Cabral  named  the  country 
which  he  touched  Vera  Cruz  or  Santa  Cruz,  and  by  his  voyage  gave  to 
the  Portuguese  a  claim  to  a  portion  of  the  mainland  of  South  America. 

Between  Columbus's  first  and  second  voyages,  some,  in  doubt  as  to 

The  Pope's       where  he  had  really  been,  feared  that  possibly  his  dis- 

demarcation      covery  lay  in  the  regions  off  the  west  coast  of  Africa,  which 

had  already  by  papal  grant  been  recognized  as  belonging 

to  Portugal.    In  order  to  prevent  dispute,  appeal  was  made  to  the  Pope 


DISCOVERY  AND  EXPLORATION  9 

for  a  decision  marking  off  the  respective  possessions  of  the  two  powers, 
Spain  and  Portugal.  By  a  bull,  or  proclamation,  the  Pope  decreed 
that  an  imaginary  demarcation  line  should  be  drawn,  running  north 
and  south  in  the  Atlantic  one  hundred  leagues  west  of  the  Cape  Verd 
Islands,  and  that  all  the  newly  discovered  lands  east  of  this  line  should 
fall  to  Portugal  and  all  west  of  it  to  Spain.  By  a  treaty  in  1494  the 
line  was  placed  at  three  hundred  and  seventy  leagues  west  of  the  Cape 
Verd  Islands,  but  even  then  the  eastern  part  of  Brazil  was  the  only 
portion  of  the  new  continent  that  fell  on  Portugal's  side  of  the  line. 

The  honor  of  discovering  the  mainland  of  North  America  is  usually 
ascribed  to  the  English,  as  the  result  of  the  voyage  of  an  English  ship 
under  an  Italian  captain,  John  Cabot,  which  arrived  in  The  discoy 
the  vicinity  of  the  Gulf  of  St.  Lawrence  in  1497.  Unlike  ery  of  North 
Cabral  in  1500,  Cabot  was  consciously  following  in  the 
paths  of  Columbus,  but  whereas  Columbus  sailed  with 
three  ships  and  ninety  men,  Cabot  mustered  only  one  ship'  and 
eighteen  men.  The  one  enjoyed  calm  sailing;  the  other  was  called 
upon  to  brave  the  storms  of  the  north  Atlantic.  "Our  Venetian,  who 
went  with  a  small  ship  from  Bristol,"  wrote  an  Italian  in  London  to 
his  brothers  in  Italy,  "has  come  back,  and  says  that  he  has  dis 
covered,  seven  hundred  leagues  off,  the  mainland  of  the  country  of 
the  Grau  Cam  (that  is,  China)  and  that  he  coasted  along  it  for  three 
hundred  leagues  and  landed,  but  did  not  see  any  persons.  But  he  has 
brought  here  to  the  King  certain  snares  spread  to  take  game,  and  a 
needle  for  making  nets,  and  he  found  some  notched  trees,  from  which 
he  judged  that  there  were  inhabitants.  .  .  .  His  name  is  Zuam 
Talbot,  and  he  is  called  the  Great  Admiral,  great  honor  being  paid  to 
him,  and  he  goes  dressed  in  silk."  Possibly  Sebastian  Cabot  accom 
panied  his  father  in  1497,  and  it  is  supposed  by  some  that  both  father 
and  son  engaged  in  a  second  voyage  to  America  in  1498,  of  which, 
however,  nothing  is  definitely  known.  Although  the  single  voyage  of 
Cabot  in  1497  laid  the  foundation  for  the  claims  of  England  to  the 
mainland  of  North  America,  the  English  made  no  effort  to  follow  up 
the  discovery  for  more  than  seventy-five  years.  Internal  and  foreign 
politics  were  absorbing  their  energies. 

The   discovery  of  America  was  now   only  begun.     Columbus   had 
disclosed  the  West  Indian  Islands  and  a  small  part  of  the  neighboring 
coast,   Cabot  a  vague  part  of  the  coast  farther  north. 
Almost  the  whole  continental  coast  line  of  North  America    cosa  map  of 
and  South  America  remained  to  be  traced,  the  interior 
mountains,  plains,  and  rivers  had  still  to  be  visited,  and 
the   long  way   searched   out   to   the  Pacific.     The   earliest   map   of 


10 


THE  NEW  WORLD 


America  now  in  existence  was  drawn  on  a  large  parchment  in  1500  by 
Juan  de  la  Cosa.  On  it  are  located  the  northern  shores  of  South 
America,  but  with  no  suggestion  of  the  great  extent  of  the  conti 
nental  mass  farther  south;  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  and  the  islands 
which  shut  it  off  from  the  Atlantic  are  in  place,  but  Florida  and  the 


Longitude       90°   West 


0°    LonsHiule  East 


ROUTES  OF  DISCOVERIES 

whole  of  the  Atlantic  coast  north  of  it  as  far  as  Nova  Scotia  or 
possibly  Newfoundland  are  not  outlined.  Two  English  flags,  marking 
the  "sea  discovered  by  Englishmen,"  roughly  locate  Cabot's  discovery. 
The  Cantino  map  of  the  year  1502,  while  confirming  that  of  La  Cosa 
concerning  the  work  of  Columbus,  is  silent  on  the  voyages  of  Cabot 
The  Cantino  and  awards  Newfoundland  to  the  Portuguese,  who 
map  of  1502.  reached  the  shores  of  this  island  in  1500-1502  under  the 
leadership  of  the  Corte-Real  brothers.  The  twenty-two  local  names  of 


DISCOVERY  AND  EXPLORATION  n 

bays  and  headlands  in  Florida  placed  upon  this  map  show  that  this 
portion  of  the  country  had  been  visited  and  traced  before  1502, 
though  when  and  by  whom  cannot  now  be  determined.  It  is  pos 
sible  that  some  unknown  voyager  set  foot  on  the  mainland  of  North 
America  before  John  Cabot. 

TRACING  THE   COAST   LINE   OF   SOUTH  AMERICA,    1500-1533 

In  a  series  of  voyages,  Americus  Vespucius,  an  Italian  in  the  service 
of  Spain,  sailed  along 'the  east  coast  of  South  America  and  possibly 
reached  that  part  of  North  America  which  is  now  the  The  voyages 
United  States.  He  described  his  explorations  in  certain  of  Americus 
letters,  and  in  one  of  these,  describing  his  voyage  of  1501  VesPuclus- 
and  published  in  Latin  under  the  title  "Mundus  Novus,"  he  boldly 
claimed  that  he  had  found  a  new  world.  "We  found  what  may  be 
called  a  new  world,"  he  wrote,  speaking  of  what  must  have  been  the 
lands  of  South  America.  In  another  account  Vespucius  also  claimed 
to  have  reached  the  mainland  of  America  in  1497.  In  his  letter  de 
scribing  his  voyage  of  1492  Columbus  had  indicated  his  belief  that 
he  had  found  Cathay  and  Cipango,  but  in  writing  of  his  voyage  of 
1498,  on  which  he  had  touched  the  mainland  of  South  America,  he 
used  language  very  much  like  that  of  Vespucius.  He  spoke  of  "a 
boundless  land  to  the  south  of  which  hitherto  there  has  been  no  knowl 
edge,"  and  he  called  it  "another  world."  Columbus,  therefore,  as 
well  as  Vespucius,  laid  claim  to  the  discovery  of  a  new  world;  but 
while  the  claims  of  the  great  Genoese  were  not  published  in  full  till  the 
nineteenth  century  and  no  reference  to  them  was  made  by  other 
writers  till  1504,  those  of  Vespucius  were  read  extensively  over  all 
Europe  in  1503. 

In  1507,  in  St.  Die  in  France,  a  German  professor,  Martin  Wald- 
seemiiller,  published  a  new  edition  of  Ptolemy's  geography,  in  which 
he  printed  one  of  the  letters  of  Vespucius  as  an  appendix  The  naming 
and  suggested  that  the  new  world  discovered  by  Americus  of  America- 
be  called  America  in  his  honor.  Suiting  his  action  to  his  words, 
Waldseemiiller  made  a  map  in  which  the  name  America,  applied 
however  only  to  South  America,  appeared  for  the  first  time.  There 
is  no  evidence  that  Vespucius  had  any  part  in  the  suggestion  of  the 
name  or  even  knew  about  it.  Many  scholars  now  believe  that  Ves 
pucius  did  not  coast  along  South  America  in  1497  before  Columbus 
reached  the  mainland,  though  undoubtedly  he  made  later  voyages 
there.  In  six  years  more  Waldseemiiller  himself  dropped  the  name 
America  and  called  South  America  "Terra  Incognita  —  discovered 


12 


THE  NEW  WORLD 


The  discov 
ery  of  the 


BALBOA  TAKING  POSSESSION  OF  THE  PACIFIC  OCEAN 


by  Columbus."  The  euphony  of  the  name  America  was  in  its  favor, 
and  it  succeeded  in  maintaining  itself. 

The  discoverer  of  the  vast  ocean  west  of  the  slowly  emerging  con 
tinent  was  Balboa.  While  searching  for  gold  in  the  Isthmus  of  Panama, 
this  Spanish 
explorer  first 
learned  from 
the  natives 

that  he  was  traversing  a 
narrow  neck  of  land  and 
that  a  great  sea  lay  be 
yond.  The  discovery 
which  ensued  was  dra 
matic  in  the  extreme. 
Guided  by  Indians  and 
followed  by  a  band  of 
picked  men,  the  leader 
made  his  way  through 
the  almost  impenetrable 

forest.  When  he  believed  that  the  moment  of  discovery  was  at 
hand,  he  ordered  the  expedition  to  stop  while  he  went  ahead  to 
high  ground  that  he  might  first  behold  the  great  view  alone.  As  the 
isthmus  runs  east  and  west  at  this  point,  he  appropriately  called 
the  waters,  which  he  beheld  to  the  south,  the  South  Sea.  Sev 
eral  days  more  of  hard  marching  brought  the  party  to  the  ocean 
side,  where  Balboa  proudly  advanced  into  the  water  and  took  posses 
sion  of  the  sea  and  all  the  lands  upon  its  borders  in  the  name  of  the 
King  of  Spain.  Later  he  made  the  first  suggestion  of  an  Atlantic- 
Pacific  canal,  when  he  proposed  to  his  sovereign  that  a  canal  be  dug 
across  the  isthmus  which  he  had  discovered.  Ten  years  earlier,  when 
Columbus  was  on  his  fourth  voyage,  the  natives  had  pointed  out  to  him 
the  nearness  of  the  southern  sea;  but  he  turned  back. 

In  the  same  year,  1513,  the  Spaniard,  Ponce  de  Leon,  who  had 
been  governor  of  Porto  Rico,  sailed  from  Cuba  and  reached  the  near-by 
mainland,  which,  as  shown  by  the  early  maps,  had  doubt 
less  been  visited  before.  In  honor  of  the  day  of  his  landing 
he  called  the  region  "Terra  de  Pascua  Florida"  or  the 
"Land  of  Easter,"  known  since  simply  as  Florida.  This 
authentic  voyage  was  the  basis  of  Spain's  claim  to  North  America. 
Like  many  another  explorer,  de  Leon  sought  gold,  but  he  also  sought 
a  more  elusive  goal,  the  fountain  of  perpetual  youth,  which,  he  had 
heard,  bubbled  in  the  wonderful  new  country.  He  staked  life  and 


Ponce  de 
Leon's  dis 
covery  of 
Florida. 


DISCOVERY  AND  EXPLORATION  13 

fortune  on  the  quest,  but  went  back  disappointed,  having  attained 
eternal  fame  but  not  the  renewal  of  youth  which  he  sought. 

Six  years  later,  another  Spaniard,  Alvarez  de  Pineda,  proved  that 
Ilorida  was  not  an  island  by  sailing  along  the  northern  shores  of  the 
Gulf  of  Mexico  as  far  west  as  Mexico.     Turning  back,  he    The  voyage 
entered  the  Rio  del  Espiritu  Santo,  which  was  either  the    ofpmeda- 
Mississippi   River   or   Mobile   Bay,   probably   the    latter,    where    he 
remained  for  six  weeks,  trading  with  the  Indians  and  observing  their 
customs. 

In  the  year  1519  Ferdinand  Magellan,  a  Portuguese  mariner  in  the 
service  of  Spain,  with  five  ships  and  a  crew  of  two  hundred  and  eighty 
men,  including  Spaniards,  Portuguese,  Genoese,  Sicilians, 
Dutch,  French,  Germans,  Greeks,  Malays,  and  Negroes,  gationofthe 
started  on  a  voyage  which  proved  to  be  epoch-making. 
Three  years  later,  on  the  thirtieth  anniversary  of  the  day 
when  Columbus  set  sail  from  the  Canaries,  eighteen  of  the  motley  crew 
returned  to  Spain  on  a  single  ship,  the  Victoria,  having  come  back  to 
their  starting  place  by  a  continuous  voyage  to  the  west.  The  earth 
had  been  circumnavigated  for  the  first  time.  Several  years  before, 
while  on  a  journey  to  the  Spice  Islands  over  the  route  of  the  Portu 
guese,  Magellan  had  come  to  believe  that  these  islands  lay  on  the 
Spanish  or  western  side  of  the  papal  line  of  demarcation  and  that 
he  could  reach  them  by  sailing  westward,  if  only  he  could  get 
around  America.  How  he  arrived  at  the  conclusion  that  he  could 
sail  around  the  new  continent,  no  one  knows.  Possibly  Vasco  da 
Gama's  success  in  finding  a  way  around  Africa  inspired  Magellan 
to  search  for  'a  similar  passage  in  the  -western  world.  He  skirted 
the  whole  of  the  eastern  coast  of  Waldseemuller's  America,  that 
is,  South  America,  examining  the  rivers  in  the  hope  of  finding  one 
that  was  salt  and  led  on  to  Cipango  and  Cathay.  So  thorough 
was  his  search  that  he  tarried  three  weeks  at  the  La  Plata  River 
to  make  sure  that  this  was  not  the  desired  passage.  Treason  and 
desertion  in  the  ranks  of  the  crew  more  than  once  threatened  to  destroy 
the  enterprise.  Five  weeks  were  spent  in  passing  through  the  winding 
passage  since  known  as  the  Straits  of  Magellan.  Emerging  from  this, 
the  expedition  came  to  the  ocean  which  Balboa  had  already  named 
the  South  Sea  but  which  Magellan  now  called  the  Pacific,  that  is,  the 
Peaceful.  The  ships  pressed  northward  for  some  days,  and  then 
struck  boldly  to  the  west  for  almost  four  months  out  of  all  sight  of  land. 
Suffering  from  scurvy  and  from  hunger  was  intense;  at  times  the  men 
were  forced  to  eat  leather,  sometimes  they  were  able  to  procure  rats. 
At  last  the  Philippine  Islands  were  reached,  where  Magellan  was 


14  THE  NEW  WORLD 

killed  by  the  natives,  but  not  before  he  realized  the  meaning  of  his 
voyage,  for  from  his  previous  journeys  to  these  parts  with  the  Por 
tuguese  he  knew  that  the  Philippines  adjoined  Asia.  He  had  proved, 
first,  that  the  world  was  round;  second,  that  there  was  an  ocean 
between  South  America  and  Asia,  by  far  the  largest  body  of  water 
on  the  globe;  and  third,  that  the  globe  was  much  larger  than 
Toscanelli,  Behaim,  and  Columbus  had  believed. 

The  remainder  of  the  coast  of  South  America  was  soon  outlined.. 
The  geographical  contributions  of  Columbus,  Vespucius,  Balboa,  and 
Completion  Magellan  were  supplemented  by  the  explorations  of  the 
of  the  out-  Pizarro  brothers,  who  conquered  Peru  in  1533  and  sailed 
South™*1  up  and  down  the  Pacific  on  the  western  shores  of  South 

America.  America  for  hundreds  of  miles.  Certainly  by  the  date 
of  their  final  successes  in  Peru,  the  whole  of  the  South  American  coast 
was  known  in  outline  to  the  Spaniards. 

PROGRESS    OF    GEOGRAPHICAL    KNOWLEDGE    CONCERNING 
NORTH    AMERICA 

Meantime  the  work  of  tracing  the  Atlantic  and  Pacific  coasts  of 
North  America  was  not  neglected.  While  Magellan  was  making  his 
voyage  around  the  world,  a  Spanish  expedition  under  Cortes,  1519- 
1521,  conquered  Mexico  and  reached  the  Pacific  in  that  quarter. 
Florida,  as  we  have  seen,  was  found  before  Magellan  had  proved  the 
The  search  continental  dimensions  of  South  America.  After  him, 

for  the  brave  mariners,  his  imitators,  set  out  to  find  a  passage 

Northwest  .  .    .       .     '  7        ™i 

Passage  to        around   America   to   Asia  in  the  north,.     Ihe   leader  in 

Asia-  this  famous   search   for  the  Northwest  Passage,   which 

was  not  <to  be  crowned  with  success  till  the  middle  of  the  nine 
teenth  century,  was  the  Spaniard  d'Ayllon,  who  examined  the  James 
River  and  Chesapeake  Bay  in  1524.  In  the  same  year,  despite 
the  monopoly  claimed  by  the  Spaniards  on  these  shores  by  virtue 
of  the  Pope's  line  of  demarcation,  the  Italian  Verrazano  sailed  along 
the  same  coasts  under  the  colors  of  the  King  of  France,  and  probably 
reached  the  Hudson  River  and  New  England.  The  next  year 
the  Spaniard  Gomez  carried  on  the  search  from  Florida  to  Labrador, 
and  in  1535  the  Frenchman  Jacques  Cartier  passed  through  the 
Gulf  of  St.  Lawrence  and  up  the  St.  Lawrence  River  as  far  as 
the  Indian  village  on  the  present  site  of  Montreal.  Still  no 
Northwest  Passage  rewarded  their  search.  At  the  same  time  the 
Spaniards  were  pushing  up  the  Pacific  coast  from  Mexico.  In 
1542  the  Spaniard  Cabrillo  sailed  as  far  north  as  Cape  Mendocino 
in  the  present  state  of  California.  With  these  labors  of  Cortes, 


DISCOVERY  AND  EXPLORATION 


in  the  in 
terior  of 
North 
America. 


d'Ayllon,   Verrazano,  Gomez,  Cartier,  and  Cabrillo,  North  America 

as  well  as   South  America  was   coming 

into  view  in  broad  outline,  though  the 

possible  connection  of  the  new  continent 

with  Asia,  its  size,  and  the  geography  of 

its  interior,  were  still  unsolved  problems. 

The   interior   of   North 
America    was    penetrated 

The  Spanish       first    on    the 

South  by  the 

Span  iards, 

who      were 
urged    on    by    their    rich 
successes  under  Cortes  in 
Mexico   and    the    Pizarro 
brothers   in   Peru.     Three 
expeditions  struck  into  the 
interior.     The   first,  under 
Narvaez,  encountered  ship 
wreck    at    the    outset    off 
the    coast    of    Florida 
1528,  and  disappeared   so 
completely    that    nothing 
was  heard  of  it  for  eight 
years, 
when  four 
survivors, 
who    had 
saved 
them- 
selves  by 
becoming 
Indian 
medicine 
men,  ar 
rived    on 
the    Pa 
cific  coast. 
A  strange 
tale  the 
leader,  de 
Vaca,  told 


SCALE   OF   MILES 


600 


ATLANTIC  DISCOVERIES 


of  their  wanderings, 
of   their  voyage   to 
the   western    shores 
of  the  Gulf  of  Mex 
ico,   of   the   hunch 
backed  cows  on  the 
great  plains  of  the 
interior,  and  of  the 
stone    cities,    which 
we    know    to    have 
been  the  pueblos  of 
the  Zufii  Indians,  in 
what    is    now    the 
southwestern      part 
of   the  United 
States,    but 
which    the 
Spanish  imagi 
nation     seized 
upon  as  being 
treasure    cities 
of    fabulous 
wealth,  and  ro- 
man  tically 
termed     the 


16  THE  NEW  WORLD 

"Seven  Cities  of  Cibola."  In  1540  an  expedition  under  Coronado  set 
out  from  the  city  of  Mexico  to  conquer  these  cities.  It  found  the 
grand  canons  of  the  Colorado  River,  the  Indian  cities  or  pueblos,  the 
hunchbacked  cows  or  buffaloes,  the  plains  east  of  the  Rocky  Moun 
tains,  and  living  on  these  plains  simple  wandering  Indian  tribes,  but 
no  gold.  Somewhere  in  what  is  now  Kansas  or  Oklahoma,  a  thousand 
miles  from  the  coast,  a  captive  Indian  woman  disappeared  from  this 
expedition  and  within  a  week's  time  fell  in  with  another  expedition 
of  white  men  from  the  Atlantic.  This  latter  company,  led  by  de  Soto? 
had  set  out  in  1539  from  Florida  under  the  inspiration  of  de  Vaca's 
story,  had  traversed  the  present  gulf  states  of  the  United  States, 
crossed  the  Mississippi,  and  entered  upon  the  plains  of  the  interior, 
but  like  that  of  Coronado,  had  failed  in  its  mission  of  finding  gold.  In 
two  more  expeditions  the  Spaniards  set  out  for  the  interior  of  North 
America,  but  in  each  case  turned  back.  They  had  explored  the 
country  at  great  sacrifice,  only  to  retire  and  devote  themselves  to 
Mexico,  Central  America,  and  South  America.  They  were  seeking 
gold,  not  homes  in  the  wilderness,  and  when  the  gold  did  not  appear 
the  whole  vast  country  north  of  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  seemed  to  them 
nothing  but  a  disappointment.  Still,  many  a  Spanish  missionary 
came  to  the  country  to  labor  for  the  conversion  of  the  Indians,  and 
to-day  the  remains  of  their  mission  buildings  may  be  seen  in  the 
southwestern  part  of  the  United  States. 

De  Vaca  and  probably  Pineda  had  sailed  past  the  mouth  of  the 
Mississippi  without  detecting  the  existence  of  the  great  river.     The 

actual  discovery  of  this  interior  waterway  fell  to  de  Sot'o. 
The  dis-  ,   .    ^ 

coyery  of  the     who  crossed  it  probably  somewhere  near  the  present  city 

Mississippi  of  Memphis,  Tennessee,  in  1541.  From  the  first  descrip 
tion  of  the  Mississippi  by  one  of  De  Soto's  men,  we  read: 
"The  river  was  almost  half  a  league  broad.  If  a  man  stood  still  on  the 
other  side,  it  could  not  be  discerned  whether  he  were  a  man  or  not. 
The  river  was  of  great  depth,  and  of  a  strong  current;  the  water  was 
alwaies  muddie;  there  came  down  the  river  continually  many  trees 
and  timber."  De  Soto,  who  died  of  fever  on  the  expedition,  was  buried 
in  the  river  which  he  had  discovered. 

The  available  places  in  which  to  search  for  the  Northwest  Passage 
were  fast  becoming  restricted.  Toward  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
The  explo-  tury>  smce  nothing  promising  had  been  found  farther 
ration  of  the  south,  English  explorers  tried  the  Arctic  regions.  Sir 
5as*  Martin  Frobisher,  in  three  voyages,  1576-1578,  entered 
the  strait  that  bears  his  name  and  also  Hudson  Strait.  John  Davis, 
1585-1587,  discovered  Davis  Strait  and  got  as  far  as  72°  north  lati- 


DISCOVERY  AND   EXPLORATION 


The  voyages 
of  Henry 
Hudson. 


tude.     William  Baffin  found  Baffin  Bay  on  the  west  of  Greenland 
in  1615. 

Henry  Hudson,  in  two  voyages  under  an  English  company,  failed 
in  his  efforts  to  strike  directly  across  the  North  Pole  to  Asia  by  way  of 

the  waters  on  the  east  of 
Greenland;  in  a  third 
voyage,  which  he  made 
in  the  service  of  the 
Dutch  East 
India  Com 
pany,  he 
changed  his  course  from 
the  northern  seas  and  in 
his  little  ship,  the  Hal] 
Moon,  in  1609  explored 
the  river  which  has  since 
been  called  by  his  name. 
Whereas  Verrazano,  al 
most  a  century  earlier, 
had  seen  only  the  mouth 
of  this  river,  Hudson 
sailed  up  its  waters  prob 
ably  as  far  north  as  the  present  site  of  Albany.  On  a  fourth  and  last 
voyage,  while  again  in  the  service  of  the  English,  Hudson  explored  Hud 
son  Bay  in  the  north,  but,  proving  less  successful  than  Columbus  and 
Magellan  in  dealing  with  mutinous  sailors,  he  was  set  adrift  in  a  small 
boat  by  his  own  men  to  die  in  that  distant  waste  of  waters. 

In   1616  the  Dutchman,   Schouten   van  Horn,  found   and   sailed 
around   the  cape  at   the  extremity  of   South   America,    The  discov- 
now  known    as    Cape    Horn.     The    English   sea    rover,    f^y  of.CaPe 

i  ,....,,       Horn  in  the 

Drake,  had  seen  the  cape  without  rounding  it;    Magel-    Antarctic 
Ian  never  knew  of  its  existence.  regions. 

The  work  of  exploring  the  northern  part  of  the  interior  of  North 
America  was  carried  on  mainly  by  Frenchmen,  who  took  up  the  task 
somewhat  less  than  a  century  after  the  Spaniards  in  the    gamuei  de 
south.     After  a  visit  to  the  Isthmus  of  Panama,  where,    Champiain's 
like  Balboa,  he  suggested  the  digging  of  a  canal  between    fn?h°e  hite^ 


THE  HALF  MOON 


the  two  oceans,  Samuel  de  Champlain,  in  the  name  of 
France,  explored  the  St.  Lawrence  River  1603-1604,  and  in 
1604-1606  explored  and  mapped  the  New  England  coast  as  far  south 
as  Cape  Cod.  In  1609  he  discovered  and  explored  Lake  Champlain, 
while  Hudson,  at  the  same  time,  coming  up  from  the  south,  was  on  the 


i8  THE  NEW  WORLD 

Hudson  River  not  many  miles  away.  Here,  occurred  one  of  those  far- 
reaching  events  that  have  changed  the  course  of  history.  Confronted 
with  the  necessity  of  taking  sides  in  an  Indian  war,  Champlain  allied 
himself  with  the  Ottawas  and  Hurons  on  his  north  and  west  against 
the  Iroquois  of  the  south.  The  Iroquois,  astounded  by  the  display 
of  the  white  man's  terrible  firearms,  were  defeated,  but  they  were  a 
powerful  tribe,  and  their  hatred  of  the  French,  which  dated  from  that 
battle,  helped  to  prevent  the  latter  from  making  their  way  into  the 
valley  of  the  Hudson.  Inasmuch  as  the  success  of  the  French,  both  in 
their  explorations  in  the  wilderness  and  in  their  fur  trade  with  the 
Indians,  depended  on  the  friendly  cooperation  of  the  natives,  the 
hostility  of  the  powerful  Iroquois,  who  occupied  in  general  what  is  now 
the  state  of  New  York,  effectually  barred  the  way  of  the  French  in  that 
direction  and  forced  them  to  penetrate  the  interior  farther  north  along 
the  banks  of  the  St.  Lawrence.  Partly  as  a  result  of  the  hatred  thus 
engendered,  the  Iroquois  allied  themselves  with  the  Dutch  and  later 
with  the  English,' who  were  the  rivals  of  the  French  in  this  region. 

Pushing  westward  north  of  the  lands  of  the  Iroquois,  a  Recollect 
friar,  Le  Caron,  reached  Lake  Huron  in  1615,  and  in  the  same  year 

Champlain    reached    Lake    Huron    and    Lake    Ontario. 
The  French        T     .      f>.   .  .  .  .       _          _  _.      _  .  .. 

discovery  of      Lake  Michigan  was  explored  by  Jean  Nicolet  in  1034,  while 

Fathers  Jogues  and  Raymbault  were  on  Lake  Superior 
in  1641.  Lake  Erie  was  probably  discovered  by  a  trader, 
Joliet,  in  1670.  In  the  same  year  La  Salle  discovered  the  Ohio  River, 
and  in  1673  Father  Marquette  and  Joliet  traversed  the  Great  Lakes 
to  the  western  shores  of  Lake  Michigan,  ascended  the  Fox  River,  and 
by  a  short  and  easy  portage  reached  the  Wisconsin,  whence  they  came 
to  the  Mississippi  and  paddled  south  on  its  waters  to  the  Arkansas. 
Their  explorations  took  them  far  enough  down  the  Mississippi  to  enable 
them  to  determine  that  it  emptied  into  the  Gulf  of  Mexico.  Up  to  this 
time,  though  Europeans  had  been  settled  on  the  Atlantic  coast  for  a 
half  century  and  more,  and  though  civilization  there  had  proceeded  so 
far  as  to  have  founded  Harvard  College,  knowledge  of  the  interior 
was  so  vague  that  it  was  believed  that  the  "great  river"  of  the  interior 
of  the  continent  emptied  into  the  Gulf  of  California.  La  Salle  ac 
complished  the  feat  of  passing  down  the  length  of  the  Mississippi  from 
the  Illinois  to  its  mouth  on  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  in  1682. 

Joliet  made  a  map  in  1673  which  shows  to  what  an  extent  his  coun 
trymen  had  enlarged  the  geographical  knowledge  of  the  interior  of 
Joiiet's  map,  North  America.  In  fairly  accurate  outline  this  map  traces 
1673-  the  Great  Lakes,  and  the  Mississippi  and  its  leading 

tributaries.     The  Northwest  was  still  unexplored,  and  the  lingering 


DISCOVERY  AND  EXPLORATION 


NOVA  TOTIVS  I  KRRARVM  ORBIS  GEOGRAPHI 


THE  WESTERN  HEMISPHERE,  BY  HENRY  HONDIUS,  1630 
From  the  Hondius-Mercator  Atlas  of  1633.    One  third  original  size. 


20  THE  NEW  WORLD 

impression  of  a  possible  connection  by  land  with  Asia  was  not  yet  dis 
pelled;  in  fact,  Jean  Nicolet  took  with  him  on  his  journey  in  1634, 
when  he  discovered  Lake  Michigan,  a  richly  embroidered  oriental 
gown,  that  he  might  enter  the  court  of  the  ruler  of  the  Chinese  in 
proper  garb.  Both  French  and  English  civilization  had  been  estab 
lished  on  the  Atlantic  seaboard  of  the  new  continent  for  many  years 
before  the  idea  was  finally  abandoned  that  China  was  to  be  reached 
overland. 

The  country  west  of  the  Mississippi  to  the  Pacific  yielded  to  ex 
plorers  slowly;  indeed  it  was  not  till  the  nineteenth  century  that  this 
part  of  North  America  was  adequately  mapped.  The  Frenchmen, 
the  La  Verendrye  brothers,  discovered  the  Rocky  Mountains  in  1743, 
Captain  Cook  mapped  the  Pacific  coast  far  into  the  north  in  1778, 
Vancouver  explored  the  same  coasts  in  1792,  in  the  same  year  Cap 

tain  Gray,  in  the  Columbia  from  Boston,  entered  the  Co- 
the  expiora-  lumbia  River,  and  less  than  fifteen  years  later,  in  1804- 
tion  of  North  1805,  Captains  Lewis  and  Clark,  coming  overland  from 

the  Mississippi  and  the  Missouri  to  the  Columbia  and  the 
Pacific,  made  the  first  recorded  journey  across  the  continent. 

The  fact  of  the  separation  of  Asia  and  North  America  was  not  made 
apparent  until  the  Danish  captain,  Vitus  Bering,  came  overland  from 
The  discov-  Europe  across  Siberia  in  the  service  of  Russia,  built  a 
eryof  Be-  fleet  on  the  Pacific,  and  discovered  Bering  Strait  in  1728 

and  Alaska  in  1741.     The  finding  of  the  Northwest  Pas- 


of  Alaska          sage  fell  to  Robert  McClure  in  1854,  long  after  its  dis 

covery  had  ceased  to  be  desired  for  commercial  purposes. 

From  this  record  of  three  and  a  half  centuries  it  will  be  seen  that  the 

discovery  of  North  America  was  not  a  single  incident  but  a  long-con 
tinued  process;  and  the  crude  maps,  which  periodically  set 

discovery  of      down  the  newest  outposts  reached  from  time  to  time, 

North.  tell  a  story  of  human  energy  and  daring,  of  hardships 

Amenca.  J 

overcome,  of  patient  endeavor  and  slow  reward,  from  the 

beginning  to  the  end  of  the  long  episode.  The  slow  progress  of  Span 
ish,  French,  English,  and  Danish  explorers  in  completing  the  outline 
of  North  America  may  be  contrasted  with  the  half  century  required  by 
the  Spanish  alone  for  tracing  the  coasts  of  South  America. 


GENERAL  REFERENCES 

CHANNING,  United  States,  I;  FISKE,  Discovery  of  America;  E.  P.  CHEYNEY,  European 
Background;  PARKMAN,  Pioneers  of  France;  BOURNE,  Spain  in  America;  WINSOR, 
America,  II-IV. 


DISCOVERY  AND   EXPLORATION  21 


SPECIAL  TOPICS 

1.  THE  NORTHMEN.     American  History  Leaflets,  3;  Contemporaries,  I,  28-35;  Origi 
nal  Narratives — The  Northmen,  etc.,  3-76;  J.  FISCHER,  Norsemen  in  America;  AVERY, 
United  States,  I,  74-96; 

2.  COLUMBIA'S  OWN  ACCOUNT  OF  His  FIRST  VOYAGE.     American  History  Leaflets, 
i;  Contemporaries,  I,  35-40;  Source  Book  1-3;  Old  South  Leaflets,  V,  102,  IX,  8;  Original 
Narratives—The  Northmen,  etc.,  77-278;    CHANNING,  United  States,  I,  1-33;   AVERY, 
United  States,  I,  134-151. 

3.  THE  LIFE   OF  .COLUMBUS.     BOURNE,  Spain  in  America,  8-19;    also   Lives. 
by  C.  K.  ADAMS,  W.  IRVING,  J.  B.  THATCHER,  and  J.  WINSOR. 

4.  MAGELLAN'S  VOYAGE,  Epochs,  I,  82-92;  J.  A.  ROBERTSON,  Antonio  Pigafetta, 
Magellan's  Voyage;  WINSOR,  America,  II,  591-612;  CHANNING,  United  States,  I,  51-54. 

5.  DE  SOTO  AND  THE  MISSISSIPPI.  Epochs,  I,  147-156;  W.  LOWERY,  Spanish  Settle 
ments,  213-252;  Original  Narratives  —  Spanish  Explorers,  127-272;  CHANNING,  United 
States,  I,  67-71;  AVERY,  United  States,  I,  285-293;  Trail  Maker  Series,  De  Soto. 

6.  THE  EXPLORATIONS  OF  MARQUETTE.     THWAITES,  Father  Marquettc;  The  Jesuit 
Relations,  LIX,  86-211;  Old  South  Leaflets,  VII,  2;  Epochs,  I,  186-196;  Contemporaries, 
I,  136-139. 

7.  THE  EXPLORATIONS  OF  LA  SALLE.     Epochs,  I,  199-206;  HART,  Contemporaries, 
I,  140-144;  OGG,  Opening  of  the  Mississippi,  81-132;  JouteVs  Journal  of  La  Salle  s 
Last  Voyage,  1684-1687;  PARKMAN,  La  Salle  and  the  Great  West;  Source  Book,  96-98; 
Trail  Maker  Series,  La  Salle. 

8.  CHAMPLAIN  AND  THE  BATTLE  WITH  THE  IROQUOIS.     Epochs,  I,  179-185;  AVERY, 
United  States,  II,  1-19;  Source  Book,  14-17;  Trail  Maker  Series,  Champlain. 

ILLUSTRATIVE   MATERIAL 

LONGFELLOW,  Skeleton  in  Armor  and  Sir  Humphrey  Gilbert;  TENNYSON,  Columbus; 
LOWELL,  Columbus;  LANIER,  Columbus;  COOPER,  Mercedes  of  Castile. 

SUGGESTIVE   QUESTIONS 

What  are  the  proofs  that  the  earth  is  round?  Trace  the  history  of  the  belief  in 
the  rotundity  of  the  earth.  In' what -did  Columbus's  greatness  consist?  What 
inventions  during  the  Renaissance  added  to  the  zest  for  geographical  exploration? 
From  what  different  sources  did  Columbus  derive  aid  and  inspiration  for  his  voyages? 
Compare  the  achievements  of  Columbus,  Cabral,  and  Cabot.  What  part  did  the 
Italians  play  in  the  discovery  of  America?  What  explanations  can  you  give,  from 
your  knowledge  of  European  history,  for  the  failure  of  the  Italians  to  found  colonies 
in  America?  Summarize  the  claims  of  Spain,  France,  and  England  to  the  new 
continent.  Name  the  discoverer  of  each  of  the  following:  the  West  Indies,  North 
America,  South  America,  the  Great  Lakes,  the  Mississippi,  the  Hudson,  the  St. 
Lawrence,  the  Ohio,  and  the  Columbia  Rivers,  the  Rocky  Mountains,  the  Pacific 
Ocean,  the  Northwest  Passage.  What  different  mariners  early  sailed  along  the  Cali 
fornia  coast? 

Follow  in  chronological  order  the  progress  of  geographical  knowledge  concerning  the 
coast  of  North  America.  Trace  the  steps  in  the  discovery  of  the  coast  line  of  South 
America.  Give  the  leading  events  in  the  exploration  of  the  interior  of  North  America 
by  the  Spaniards  and  by  the  French. 


CHAPTER   II 
THE   NATIVE   AMERICANS   AND   THEIR   COUNTRY 

THE  PEOPLE 

LIGHT  is  thrown  on  the  nature  of  the  native  Americans  by  their 
attitude  toward  the  first  white  men  whom  they  beheld.  "Come, 
How  the  come,  you  will  see  men  from  Heaven!"  they  shouted  to 

Jndiansd  one  another  when  Columbus  first  passed  among  them. 
thTfirst  "Whereupon  both  women  and  men,  children  and  adults, 

Europeans.  young  and  old,  laying  aside  the  fear  they  had  felt  a  little 
before,  flocked  eagerly  to  see  us,  a  great  crowd  thronging  about  our 
steps,  some  bringing  food  and  others  drink,  with  greatest  love  and 
incredible  good  will."  Such  is  Columbus's  own  description  of  his  first 
reception  by  the  Indians.  In  Mexico  there  was  a  tradition  of  a  Fair 
God,  who  was  to  come  from  Heaven  and  set  up  his  kingdom  on  the 
earth,  and  to  the  simple-minded  natives  Cortes  was  this  god;  at  one 
place  fifty  Mexicans  were  sacrificed  alive  to  the  Spaniards  as  to  deities, 
and  cakes  dipped  in  the  blood  of  the  victims  were  offered  them  to  eat. 
In  California  the  Englishman  Drake  was  worshiped  with  the  greatest 
reverence  and  importuned  to  remain  there  and  become  King  of  the 
land.  Cartier  and  Verrazano  were  gods  to  the  Indians,  and  so  were  the 
first  Europeans  in  different  parts  of  America.  Nothing  more  pathetic 
can  be  found  in  history.  It  was  the  genuine  and  unconscious  tribute 
of  barbarism  to  a  superior  civilization,  before  bitter  experience  had 
taught  distrust  of  the  intruders.  The  Indians  had  never  seen  horses  or 
firearms;  and  to  their  simple  minds  a  European,  seated  on  a  strange 
monster  and  discharging  a  gun  with  a  flash  of  fire,  must  truly  have 
seemed  like  a  being  from  another  world,  wielding  the  thunderbolts  of 
Heaven. 

The  Indians  depended  upon  agriculture,  hunting,  and  fishing  for  their 
food,  and  led  a  wandering  life,  moving  on  to  new  abodes  when  the  soil 
The  Indian  of  any  one  section  and  the  supply  of  game  and  fish  became 
mode  of  life,  exhausted.  Women  performed  the  manual  labor,  while 
the  men  passed  their  time  in  the  chase  and  in  almost  perpetual 
warfare.  Their  houses  were  generally  clustered  in  temporary  stock 
aded  villages,  and  were  of  different  styles  in  different  parts  of  the 

22 


THE  NATIVE  AMERICANS  AND  THEIR  COUNTRY         23 

country.  In  the  region  between  the  Great  Lakes  and  the  Hudson 
River,  these  habitations  were  usually  long  one-story  structures,  covered 
with  bark,  in  the  central  and  western  part  of  the  continent  tents  of 
buffalo  skins  and  round  mud  houses,  and  in  the  southwest  caves  and 
even  stone  pueblos.  These  pueblos,  sometimes  accommodating  as 


AN  INDIAN  VILLAGE 
From  the  picture  by  A.  Bierstadt 

many  as  five  thousand  people,  were  more  substantially  built  than  the 
other  Indian  dwellings,  and  give  evidence  of  a  slight  advance  in  civiliza 
tion. 

The  Indians  in  physical  stature  were  in  general  fairly  tall,  with 
cinnamon-colored  complexion,  small,  dark,  deep-set  eyes,  high  cheek 
bones,  straight  black  hair,  and  a  scanty  beard.     In  dignity    physical 
of  physical  bearing  they  far  surpassed  most  uncivilized    characteris- 
races.     Long  habit  in  the  chase  had  endowed  them  with 
unusually  keen   senses    of    sight,  smell,  and    hearing,  extraordinary 
ability  to  endure  hardship  and  pain,  and  great  swiftness  of  foot,  but 
in  most  other  physical  characteristics  they  were  decidedly  inferior. 
In  competition  with  the  Europeans  they  were  seldom  able  to  undergo 
hard  work  long  and  steadily,  and  from  the  point  of  view  of  civili 
zation  their  manual  labor  was  almost  useless.     A  sad  phase  of  their 
physical  inferiority  was  manifest  in  the  terrible  mortality  among  them 
3 


24  THE  NEW  WORLD 

from  the  diseases  brought  from  Europe,  principally  smallpox,  measles, 
and  yellow  fever.  Probably  the  most  destructive  of  these  was  small 
pox,  which  early  spread  among  them  and  in  some  localities  carried  off 
half  the  population.  The  number  of  deaths  from  this  scourge  was 
greatly  increased  because  in  their  ignorance  the  victims  often  plunged 
themselves  into  cold  water  for  relief.  Measles,  too,  desolated  whole 
sections.  The  same  sad  tale  is  brought  from  other  parts  of  the  world, 
where  civilization  and  barbarism  have  met  for  the  first  time. 

There  was  marked  disparity  in  the  degree  of  civilization  attained 
by  the  Indians  in  different  parts  of  the  country.  Those  living  in 
Indian  Central  and  South  America,  notably  the  Mexicans  and 

civilization.  Peruvians,  were  much  farther  advanced  than  the  others. 
They  built  large  communal  houses  and  temples,  worked  in  gold,  silver, 
and  copper,  and  invented  picture  writing.  In  general,  most  of  the 
tribes  displayed  some  skill  in  decorative  art  and  pottery,  basketry  and 
weaving;  but  their  music  was  primitive,  they  possessed  no  great  poems 
or  literary  works,  and  were  not  truly  civilized. 

The  Indians  were  essentially  religious.     They  worshiped  spiritual 

powers  with  prayers  and  offerings,  in  some  instances  with  human 

R  r  i  n  sacrifices.     They    believed    in    a    future    life    where    the 

happy  hunting  grounds  continued  the  pleasures  of  earth, 

and  in  this  belief  they  placed  the  trappings  of  the  warrior  on  his  grave. 

Although  the  Indians  practiced  a  primitive  sort  of  agriculture, 
their  farms,  if  such  a  term  may  be  applied  to  their  shifting  places  of 
Native  abode,  differed  widely  from  the  farms  of  civilization, 

plants.  Their  implements,  like  their  weapons,  were  of  stone,  or, 

rarely,  of  bronze.  The  native  crops  were  maize,  beans,  pumpkins, 
squashes,  sunflowers,  watermelons,  and  tomatoes.  Maize,  or  Indian 
corn,  on  many  an  occasion  saved  the  lives  of  the  white  settlers  in 
time  of  need,  and  is  now  America's  greatest  crop.  From  the  Indians, 
also,  Europeans  derived  tobacco  and  white  and  sweet  potatoes.  Native 
dishes  added  by  the  Indians  to  the  world's  menu  were  mush  and 
succotash;  indeed,  the  words  pumpkin,  squash,  mush,  and  succotash 
are  of  Indian  origin.  Sugar  was  obtained  from  the  maple  trees,  but 
there  was  no  sugar  cane;  rice  was  found  in  some  regions. 

The  Europeans  of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries,  like 
those  of  the  eleventh  century,  found  North  America  a  natural  vine- 
Native  yard.  In  a  description  of  New  England  of  1632  Thomas 
fruits.  Morton  wrote:  " Vines  of  this  kind  of  trees  there  are 
that  beare  grapes  of  three  colors,  that  is  to  say:  white,  black,  and  red. 
The  country  is  so  apt  of  vines,  that,  but  for  the  fire  at  the  spring  of 
the  year,  the  vines  would  so  overspreade  the  land,  that  one  should 


THE  NATIVE  AMERICANS  AND  THEIR  COUNTRY         25 

not  be  able  to  passe  for  them,  the  fruit  is  as  bigg  of  some  as  a  musket 
bullet,  and  is  excellent  in  taste."  Edward  Winslow  in  1621  wrote  from 
Plymouth  in  New  England,  of  "plums  of  three  sorts,  white,  black, 
and  red,  being  almost  as  good  as  a  damson."  John  Smith  at  about 
the  same  time  in  Virginia  saw  "some  few  crabs,  but  very  small  and 
bitter."  Another  Englishman,  writing  of  New  England  in  1634, 
well  described  the  choke  cherry,  which  he  found  there:  "The  cherrie 
trees  yield  great  store  of  cherries  which  grow  on  clusters  like  grapes; 
they  be  much  smaller  than  our  English  cherrie,  nothing  near  so  good  if 
they  be  not  fully  ripe,  they  so  furre  the  mouth  that  the  tongue  will 
cleave  to  the  roofe,  and  the  tnroat  wax  hoarse  with  swallowing  those 
red  bullies  (as  I  may  call  them)  being  little  better  in  taste.  English 
ordering  may  bring  them  to  an  English  cherrie,  but  yet  they  are  as  wild 
as  the  Indians."  Strawberries  were  mentioned  as  early  as  1635: 
"Strawberries  in  abundance,  verie  large  ones,  some  being  two  inches 
about;  one  may  gather  half  a  bushel  in  a  forenoone."  "Strawberry 
bread,"  made  of  corn  meal  mixed  with  berries,  was  a  favorite  Indian 
dish.  There  were  found  also  (in  America  native  raspberries,"  black 
berries,  gooseberries,  currants,  elderberries,  cranberries,  blueberries, 
and  huckleberries.  Most  of  the  plums,  apples,  and  cherries  now  in 
domestic  use,  and  all  apricots,  peaches,  oranges,  figs,  and  dates  are  of 
European  origin. 

There  was  no  native  American  flax,  hemp,  or  silk,  though  there  was 
a  native  cotton.     In  the  American  fields  and  forests  the  Europeans 
first  found  vanilla,  cayenne  pepper,  quinine,  arrowroot,    Other 
chocolate,  and  cocoa.     America  was  rich  in  nuts,  among    American 
them   hickories    (including  pecans),   chestnuts,   walnuts,    ] 
butternuts,  hazelnuts,  beechnuts,  and  acorns. 

Of  domestic  animals  the  Indians    used    the  llama  and  alpaca  in 
South  America;  there  was  a  native  North  American  turkey;  but  horses, 
mules,  cattle,  sheep,  hogs,  goats,  chickens,  ducks,  geese,    Domestic 
and  even  dogs,  cats,  and  rats,   though  not  mice,  were    animals- 
brought  by  the  Europeans. 

The  number  of  native  languages  when  the  Europeans  arrived  cer 
tainly  reached  several  hundred,  and  the  number  of  tribes  was  corre 
spondingly  large.  In  the  extreme  west  of  the  present  United    The  various 
States  were  the  Apaches  and  Shoshones;    on  tfce  Great    tribes- 
Plains,  the  Siouan  tribes,  Omahas,  lowas,  and  Pawnees;  in  the  North 
west,  the  Blackfeet,  Cheyennes,  Mandans,  and  Crows;   on  the  Upper 
Mississippi,  the  Ojibwas  and  Illinois;  in  the  South,  the  Chickasaws, 
Choctaws,  Creeks,  Seminoles,  and  Cherokees;  in  the  Ohio  Valley,  the 
Miamis,  Delawares,  and  Shawnees;  on  the  Potomac,  the  Powhatans;  and 


26  THE  NEW  WORLD 

south  of  the  Great  Lakes,  the  Iroquoian  family  of  Mohawks,  Onondagas, 
and  Senecas.  It  is  roughly  estimated  that  at  the  time  of  the  discovery 
of  America  there  were  within  the  present  limits  of  the  United  States  one 
hundred  and  fifty  thousand  Indians  east  of  the  Mississippi,  and  two 
hundred  and  fifty  thousand  west  of  that  river,  or  about  four  hundred 
thousand  in  all.  This  is  nearly  twice  as  many  as  at  the  present  time. 
There  have  been  theories  that  the  Indians  were  the  remnants  of  the 
so-called  lost  tribes  of  Israel,  or  that  they  were  sprung  from  Chinamen 
Theories  as  to  who  had  drifted  across  the  Pacific  or  had  crossed  on  the 
the  origin  of  chain  of  the  Aleutian  Islands,  which  form  a  broken  line 
between  the  two  continents,  but  modern  scholarship  in 
clines  to  the  view  that  the  Indians  originated  in  America,  or  at  least 
had  lived  here  for  many  thousands  of  years.  Once,  too,  it  was  believed 
that  the  Mound  Builders,  the  makers  of  the  curious  artificial  mounds  of 
earth  between  the  Mississippi  River  and  the  Allegheny  Mountains,  were 
a  distinct  race  from  the  Indians.  When  opened,  however,  the  mounds 
disclose  the  same  arrowheads,  tomahawks,  axes,  hammers,  jugs, 
kettles,  and  pipes,  which  we  have  learned  to  associate  with  the  Indians 
of  the  historic  period,  and  it  is  now  generally  believed  that  the  Mound 
Builders  were  Indians,  who  had  lived  here  from  time  immemorial. 

THE   COUNTRY 

The  first  Europeans  in  America  were  doomed  to  many  a  disappoint 
ment  in  the  matter  of  climate.  The  effects  of  the  Gulf  Stream,  which 
The  climate  carries  the  heat  of  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  away  from  North 
of  America.  America  to  warm  the  shores  of  western  Europe,  were  at 
first  not  recognized  by  the  newcomers.  Their  natural  expectation  was 
that  in  a  given  latitude  the  climate  of  America  would  approximate 
that  of  Europe.  New  England,  from  June  to  September,  did  appear 
to  have  a  climate  similar  to  that  of  northern  Spain  or  southern  France 
in  the  same  latitude.  A  New  England  winter,  on  the  other  hand, 
resembled  that  of  Norway  or  Sweden,  while  Labrador,  which  was 
only  as  far  north  as  England,  had  a  climate  which  in  Europe  was 
known  only  within  the  Arctic  Circle.  The  death  toll  in  the  winter 
time  among  the  first  colonists  who  came  to  America  was  heavy. 

Low-lying  shores,  cut  by  numerous  navigable  streams,  rendered 
the  Atlantic  coast  of  North  America  more  easy  of  access  than  was  the 
Rivers  and  Pacific  coast.  The  majority  of  these  Atlantic  rivers  were 
mountains.  short  and  swift,  and  possessed  of  water  power  well  suited 
to  the  manufacturing  which  was  to  spring  up  in  later  centuries.  The 
interior  of  the  continent  could  not  easily  be  penetrated  along  these 
streams,  for  the  reason  that  some  few  miles  inland  they  were  usually 


THE  NATIVE  AMERICANS  AND  THEIR  COUNTRY         27 

}j.'j)ken  in  their  course  by  rapids  and  falls,  which  were  difficult  of  pas 
sage.  Still  farther  inland  they  lost  themselves  in  a  mountain  barrier, 
the  Appalachians,  which  extended  parallel  to  the  seashore  as  far 
south  as  Georgia.  The  waters  of  the  St.  Lawrence  cut  this  barrier  in 
the  north,  but  it  was  early  found  that  this  waterway,  filled  with  rapids 
and  frozen  over  for  nearly  half  the  year,  was  not  all  that  could  be 
desired  as  a  key  to  the  interior  of  the  continent.  Nor  was  the  Mis 
sissippi  a  much  more  satisfactory  route  inland,  since  hidden  shoals 
rendered  its  ascent  so  difficult  that  navigation  of  its  waters  could  be 
easily  accomplished  only  southward  with  the  current.  Confronted 
by  these  conditions,  the  European  settlers  quite  naturally  contented 
themselves  at  first  with  the  coast.  They  did  not  explore  the  passes 
over  the  mountains  to  the  west  till  almost  a  century  after  their  first 
settlement,  and  they  did  not  push  through  these  barriers  in  any  con 
siderable  numbers  for  another  half  century.  To  encircle  the  south 
ern  extremity  of  the  Appalachians  was  for  a  long  time  rendered 
impossible  by  the  presence  in  this  region  of  the  formidable  Creeks 
and  Cherokees. 

When  the  advancing  tide  of  settlers  at  last  poured  over  the  moun 
tains  in  the  latter  part  of  the  eighteenth  century,  they  found  stretching 
before  them  to  the  west,  for  thousands  of  miles,  the  great    The  interior 
interior  plains  of  the  country,  passage  of  which  was  easy,    of  North 
The  high  and  difficult  Rocky  Mountains  and  the  Sierra    Am< 
Nevada  and  Coast  Ranges,  farther  on  toward  the  Pacific,  were  reached 
so  late  that  their  conquest  was  facilitated  by  the  newly  contrived  rail 
roads.     Throughout  the  great  sweep  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific 
there  were  no  insurmountable  natural  barriers,  so  that  division  of  the 
country  into  a  number  of  rival  political  units  was  not  a  geographical 
necessity.     So  far  as  mere  physical  features  were  concerned,  the  way 
was  open  for  one  united  nation  of  continental  dimensions. 

Fortunately  the  Europeans  found  the  struggle  for  existence  in 
America  comparatively  easy.  The  Atlantic  Ocean,  from  Newfound 
land  to  Cape  Cod,  contained  an  abundance  of  sea  food,  Natural 
particularly  the  valuable  codfish  and  mackerel,  which  resources, 
were  highly  esteemed  as  early  as  the  days  of  Columbus  and  have 
constituted  the  basis  of  a  valuable  industry  down  to  the  present  time. 
On  land  the  fertile  soil  responded  quickly  to  the  efforts  of  the  husband 
men.  As  has  been  well  said,  raising  their  own  food  has  seldom  been  a 
serious  problem  for  the  settlers  in  virgin  America.  Over  and  above 
its  own  needs,  the  country  has  usually  been  able  to  furnish  a  surplus 
for  consumption  abroad.  Supplies  of  game,  such  as  deer,  elk,  wild 
geese,  and  turkeys,  abounded.  The  forests,  extending  as  far  west 


28  THE  NEW  WORLD 

as  the  plains  of  the  interior,  furnished  an  abundance  of  lumber;  and 
everywhere,  in  forests,  streams,  and  plains,  the  beaver,  otter,  sable, 
badger,  buffalo,  deer,  and  other  fur-bearing  animals  yielded  rich 
returns  to  the  fur  trader.  The  vast  mineral  resources  of  gold,  silver, 
copper,  coal,  iron,  and  petroleum,  though  not  yielding  up  their  treasure 
to  the  early  settlers,  have  added  immensely  to  the  wealth  of  the  country, 
as  from  time  to  time  the  secret  of  their  existence  has  been  wrested 
from  nature. 

The  vastness  of  the  new  continent  surprised  the  Europeans.  Both 
North  America,  with  8,000,000  square  miles,  and  South  America,  with 
Area  6,800,000  square  miles,  are  larger  than  Europe,  which 

totals  only  3,700,000  square  miles.  Exclusive  of  the 
island  possessions,  the  present  area  of  the  United  States,  3,600,000 
square  miles,  is  almost  as  large  as  the  whole  of  Europe. 

GENERAL   REFERENCES 

D.  G.  BRINTON,  American  Race;  PARKMAN,  Oregon  Trail;  FISKE,  Discovery,  I; 
E.  C.  SEMPLE,  Geographic  Conditions;  N.  S.  SHALER,  United  States;  L.  FARRAND, 
Basis  of  American  History;  W.  LOWERY,  Spanish  Settlements,  3-26;  L.  H.  BAILEY, 

Sketch  of  the  Evolution  of  Our  Native  Fruits. 

SPECIAL  TOPICS 

1.  THE  MOUND  BUILDERS.     FISKE,  Discovery,  I,  140-146;  AVERY,  United  Slates, 
I,  22-62. 

2.  THE  INDIANS.     CURTIS,   The  North  American  Indian;  Old  South  Leaflets,  IV, 
87,  143,  and  VIII,  i,  2,  3,  8;  Epochs,  I,  64-67;  Contemporaries,  II,  327-336;  OSGOOD, 
Colonies  in  the  Seventeenth  Century,  I,  527-576;  W.  LOWERY,  Spanish  Settlements,  27- 
78;  WINSOR,  America,  I,  133-444;  AVERY,  United  States,  I,  338-368;  Source  Book, 
23-25;  Trail  Maker  Series,  Five  Nations. 

3.  THE  CONQUEST  or  MEXICO.    FISKE,  Discovery,  II,  213-293;  L.  MORGAN,  Monte- 
zuma's  Dinner,  North  American  Review,  April,  1876;  PRESCOTT,  Conquest  of  Mexico; 
SIR  A.  HELPS,  Cortez:  AVERY,  United  States,  I,  252-262;  WINSOR,  America,  II,  349-396. 

4.  THE  CONQUEST  OF  PERU.     FISKE,  Discovery,  II,  365-426;  PRESCOTT,  Conquest 
of  Peru;  WINSOR,  America,  II,  505-572. 

ILLUSTRATIVE   MATERIAL 

WALLACE,  Fair  God;  LONGFELLOW,  Hiawatha;  COOPER,  Deerslayer;  BRYANT, 
Indian  at  the  Burial  Place  of  His  Fathers;  HOPKINS,  Indian  Book. 

SUGGESTIVE  QUESTIONS 

What  practical  knowledge  did  the  whites  gain  from  the  Indians?  Why  were  the 
Indians  overawed  by  the  whites?  How  did  the  Indians  receive  their  name?  Discuss 
the  climate  of  North  America,  as  compared  with  that  of  Europe. 


PART  II 
THE   EUROPEAN    COLONIES 

CHAPTER   III 
SPANISH   AND   PORTUGUESE   AMERICA 

THE  word  "  frontier  "has  two  meanings.  First,  it  is  used  to  designate 
that  part  of  a  country  which  faces  another  country.  Thus  the  French 
speak  of  their  German  frontier,  meaning  by  that  the  part  Mearung  of 
of  their  country  which  faces  Germany.  Second,  by  a  the  word  ^ 
frontier  is  meant  the  edge  or  border  of  civilization.  As 
civilization  pushes  into  a  new  region  the  frontier  may  be  said  to  include 
the  little  fringe  of  settlements  on  the  remote  outskirts.  In  this  sense 
early  America  may  be  spoken  of  as  the  frontier  of  Europe.  The  first 
great  frontier  of  which  there  is  definite  knowledge  was  that  built  up  by 
the  ancient  Greeks,  as  they  spread  their  colonies  along  the  unoccupied 
borders  of  the  ^Egean  and  Mediterranean  Seas.  The  Roman  Empire 
had  a  frontier  in  Britain,  in  Germany,  in  Africa,  and  in  other  parts 
of  the  world  on  the  borders  of  its  domain.  Then,  for  a  thousand 
years  and  more,  all  the  known  parts  of  the  globe  that  seemed  desirable 
were  filled  in  with  people,  no  more  outposts  of  civilization  were  erected, 
and  the  world  quite  forgot  about  frontier  building  till  Columbus  gave 
to  civilization  a  new  opportunity  to  extend  its  borders. 

What  followed  was  in  reality  a  grand  scramble  among  the  powers 
of  Europe  for  the  possession  of  what  were  considered  the  most  desirable 
parts  of  the  new  continent.     Utterly  regardless  of  the    The  gran(j 
rights  of  the  natives,  greedy  Europe  sliced  up  America  in    scramble  for 
much  the  same  fashion  as  it  partitioned  Africa   in   the    ' 
nineteenth  century.     On  the  present  map  of  Africa  there  are  here 
British  colonies,  here  French,  here  German,  and  so  on;  each  power  has 
taken  what  it  could,  and  the  native  Africans  have  been  little  regarded. 
Just  so  it  has  been  in  parts  of  China  until  recently,  and  just  so  it  was 
in  the  new  world  of  Columbus. 

We  shall  devote  our  main  attention  to  those  parts  of  the  new  frontier 
occupied  by  the  thirteen  English  colonies  which  later  formed  the 
United  States  of  America,  but  in  order  to  understand  the  develop- 

29 


3o  THE  EUROPEAN   COLONIES 

ment  of  this  portion  we  must  briefly  notice  those  parts  of  the  English 
frontier  in  America  that  did  not  enter  into  the  United  States,  and 
also  the  American  frontiers  of  the  other  European  powers.  We  shall 
see  how  the  different  nations  of  Europe,  step  by  step,  made  their  settle 
ments  in  America,  and  how  these  struggled  with  one  another  in  rivalry; 
how  the  colonies  of  the  English  gradually  grew  larger  and  more  impor 
tant  than  the  others,  how  at  length,  by  a  revolution,  the  greater  part 
of  these  English  colonies  separated  themselves  from  the  mother  coun 
try  and  became  the  independent  nation  of  the  United  States  of  America, 
and  how  the  new  nation  from  time  to  time  added  to  its  area  till  it 
reached  to  the  Pacific  and  even  to  the  islands  beyond. 

It  is  necessary  at  the  outset  to  understand  why  Europeans  ex 
changed  their  life  in  the  settled  society  of  Europe  for  that  of  the 
Why  the  American  wilderness.  In  Europe  the  civilization  of  the 

Europeans        time  was  at  its  best,  while  life  in  America  meant  a  dan- 
came  to  the 
frontier  in         gerous  voyage  over  the  sea,  exposure  to  savage  races, 

America.  an(j  utter  abandonment  of  the  comforts  of  home.     Yet 

thousands  made  the  change.  Some  sought  gold  and  silver  and 
improvement  in  worldly  fortune,  some  sought  to  extend  trade,  and 
some  to  increase  geographical  knowledge;  some  went  as  condemned 
criminals  to  escape  prison  sentences,  some  out  of  a  mere  love  of 
adventure,  and  a  few  to  convert  the  natives  to  Christianity;  but  by 
far  the  largest  number  fled  from  overcrowded  conditions  of  life  at 
home,  from  religious  persecution,  or  from  the  arbitrary  rule  of  tyran 
nical  monarchs. 

The  Spaniards  planted  their  first  settlements  in  the  West  Indian 
Islands  while  Columbus  was  still  alive.  Thence  they  spread  to 
The  golden  Mexico,  to  Central  America,  and  to  South  America,  where, 

kingdom  of  m  Peru,  they  found  their  golden  kingdom.  When  the 
the  Spanish  _..  '  J!  •  i  •  Ai. 

frontier,  Pizarro  brothers  captured  the  Peruvian  king,  the  royal 

Peru-  captive,  standing  in  a  room  twenty-two  feet  long  and 

seventeen  feet  wide,  made  a  mark  on  the  wall  as  high  as  he  could 
reach,  offering  for  his  freedom  gold  enough  to  fill  the  room  up  to  that 
mark;  and  this  enormous  ransom,  amounting  to  $15,000,000  in  gold, 
was  easily  raised,  and  a  large  amount  of  silver  as  well. 

Mexico   was   almost   as   rich.     Throughout   the   seventeenth   and 

eighteenth  centuries  the  mines  of  Peru  and  Mexico  together  produced 

annually   from  $30,000,000  to  $40,000,000,   and   at    the 

present  time  the  apparently  inexhaustible  yield  still  goes 

on.     Spain  was  rendered  wonderfully  rich  by  the  influx  of  treasure 

from  her  western  possessions,  and  her  leadership  among  the  nations 

was  assured  for  almost  a  century. 


SPANISH  AND   PORTUGUESE  AMERICA  31 

It  followed  as  a  matter  of  course  that  men  were  attracted  by  suc 
cessful  gold  hunting,  so  that  it  is  not  strange  that  the  Spaniards  left 
what  is  now  the  United  States,  where  their  search  revealed  The  popula- 
no  gold,  and  flocked  by  thousands  to  the  more  southern  Spanish*16 
lands.  St.  Augustine  in  Florida,  the  oldest  permanent  frontier, 
white  settlement  within  the  present  limits  of  the  United  States,  founded 
in  1565,  and  Santa  Fe  in  New  Mexico,  founded  in  1605,  marked  the 
limits  of  their  northern  settlement,  and  these  were  both  small  villages. 
The  Spaniards  likewise  deserted  the  West  Indies,  with  the  exception 
of  Cuba  and  a  few  of  the  larger  islands,  as  soon  as  the  scant  supply  of 
gold  there  gave  out.  A  census  of  1576  revealed  the  presence  in  South 
America,  or,  as  it  was  called,  New  Spain,  of  160,000  Spaniards.  To  a 
remarkable  extent  the  natives  were  then  living  in  settled  villages, 
attending  Christian  churches  and  schools,  of  which  there  were  hun 
dreds,  and  slowly  taking  on  the  ways  of  civilization.  Progress  was 
perhaps  facilitated  by  the  intermarriage  of  the  races.  There  were 
mestizos,  born  of  Spanish  fathers  and  Indian  mothers;  mulattoes,  of 
white  and  negro  parentage,  for  negroes  were  early  brought  from  Africa; 
quadroons,  three-fourths  white  and  one-fourth  black;  octoroons, 
seven-eighths  white  and  one-eighth  black;  and  zambos,  of  negro  and 
Indian  parentage. 

An  unfavorable  side  of  the  Spanish  dealings  with  the  new  races 
was  the  enforced  labor  of  the  latter.  At  first  in  the  West  Indies,  under 
Columbus  himself,  who  started  the  practice,  and  then  Indian 
under  his  successors,  the  Indians  were  enslaved  without  slavefy- 
mercy  and  treated  with  the  utmost  cruelty.  An  historian,  relying  on  a 
Spanish  writer  for  his  authority,  thus  describes  the  cruelty  perpetrated 
on  the  helpless  natives.  "Indians  were  slaughtered  by  the  hundreds, 
burned  alive,  impaled  on  sharp  stakes,  torn  to  pieces  by  bloodhounds. 
.  .  .  .  Once,  'in  honor  and  reverence  of  Christ  and  his  twelve  apostles,' 
they  hanged  thirteen  Indians  in  a  row  at  such  a  height  that  their  toes 
touched  the  ground,  and  then  pricked  them  to  death  with  their  sword 
points,  taking  care  not  to  kill  them  too  quickly."  Gradually,  be  it 
said  to  the  credit  of  the  Spaniards,  conditions  were  improved  and  the 
servitude  of  the  Indians  was  prohibited,  though  this  step  was  doubtless 
prompted  more  by  the  unprofitableness  of  Indian  labor  than  by  humani 
tarian  motives. 

Even  before  the  abolition  of  the  slavery  of  the  Indians  had  been 
fully  accomplished,  as  soon  as  it  was  perceived  that  the  Indians  did 
not   possess    the   physical   endurance   necessary   for   the    African 
hard  work  of  the  mines,  the  stronger  blacks  of  Africa  were    slavery- 
imported  to  take  their  places.     A  beginning  of  the  new  traffic,  which 


32  THE  EUROPEAN  COLONIES 

was  to  continue  for  more  than  three  hundred  and  fifty  years,  was  made 
in  1502,  and  soon  Africa  was  yielding  up  her  natives  to  America  by  the 
thousand.  The  slaves  of  the  Greeks  and  Romans  had  been  largely 
whites,  often  as  refined  and  intelligent  as  their  masters.  In  the  fifteenth 
century  there  was  hardly  a  vestige  left  in  Europe  of  anything  that 
could  be  called  real  slavery,  when  suddenly  the  new  negro  slavery 
sprang  into  existence.  The  Portuguese  were  the  first  in  modern  times 
to  make  a  business  of  kidnapping  the  blacks,  and  upon  the  Spaniards 
rests  the  responsibility  for  their  introduction  into  America. 

The  Spaniards  were  very  jealous  of  their  frontier  empire.  They 
would  allow  none  but  Spanish  ships  to  trade  with  New  Spain,  and 
Spanish  ex-  none  but  Spaniards  to  enter  the  country.  All  trade  and 
clusiveness.  communication  with  Europe  was  to  be  by  way  of  the 
mother  country  alone,  and  this  only  once  a  year.  Large  fleets,  some 
times  numbering  scores  of  vessels,  annually  made  the  passage  back 
and  forth  over  the  Atlantic,  bearing  men,  treasure,  and  supplies.  But 
the  secret  of  the  fleets  could  not  be  kept;  rumors  of  their  untold  riches 
would  not  down;  and  soon  every  civilized  nation  was  the  enemy  of 
Spain,  waiting  for  a  chance  to  pounce  upon  the  treasure  ships  and  if 
possible  to  steal  away  from  her  a  slice  of  America. 

So  occupied  were  the  Portuguese  in  building  up  their  trading  posts 
in  the  East  Indies,  that  they  established  but  few  colonies  in  the  western 
The  world,  notably  a  few  in  Brazil.  As  a  result 'of  European 

Portuguese  wars,  the  mother  country  and  her  possessions  were  under 
the  Spanish  yoke  from  1580  to  1639,  but  in  the  latter  year 
this  yoke  was  thrown  off,  and  Brazil  again  became  a  Portuguese  colony, 
thoroughly  Portuguese  in  language,  traditions,  and  civilization. 

GENERAL   REFERENCES 

BOURNE,  Spain  in  America;  FISKE,  Discovery,  II;  SIR  A.  HELPS,  Spanish  Conquest; 
LOWERY,  Spanish  Settlements;  WINSOR,  America,  VIII. 

SPECIAL  TOPICS 

i.  SLAVERY  IN  SPANISH  AMERICA.  FISKE,  Discovery,  II,  427-482;  Epochs,  II, 
70-75;  WINSOR,  America,  II,  299-348;  SIR  A.  HELPS,  Las  Cqsas. 

SUGGESTIVE  QUESTIONS 

What  arguments  can  you  give  for  and  against  the  Spanish  policy  of  excluding  all 
other  nations  from  New  Spain?  In  what  respects  did  the  Spanish  civilization  of 
South  America  differ  from  that  of  the  English  in  North  America? 


CHAPTER   IV 

ENGLISH   AMERICA    UNDER    QUEEN   ELIZABETH    AND 
THE   EARLY   STUART   KINGS,    1558-1642 

CRUSHING  THE   SEA   POWER   OF   SPAIN 

UNDER  the  wise  and  powerful  leadership  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  1558- 
1603,  England  became  Spain's  most  troublesome  rival.  The  exciting 
internal  and  foreign  politics,  which  had  absorbed  the  xhe  rivalry 
attention  of  the  nation  in  the  years  immediately  following  of  England 
the  voyages  of  the  Cabots  and  had  prevented  the  sailing 
of  more  English  vessels  to  the  west,  were  relaxing  their  hold,  and 
England  was  entering  upon  a  long  period  of  peace,  recuperation,  and 
expansion.  Although  small  in  geographical  extent,  the  little  island 
kingdom  now  boldly  disputed  Spain's  proud  claim  to  the  title  of  the 
first  power  in  Europe  and  opposed  her  at  every  step.  When  King 
Philip  of  Spain,  with  the  evident  design  of  adding  England  to  his  grow 
ing  dominions,  requested  Elizabeth's  hand  in  marriage,  the  Queen, 
suspecting  the  King's  motives,  gave  his  royal  highness  a  polite  refusal, 
which  incident  served  to  increase  the  bitterness  between  their  realms. 
Violent  differences  of  religion  were  another  cause  of  estrangement. 
Protestant  England  openly  lent  sympathy  and  aid  to  the  struggling 
Dutch,  whom  Philip,  champion  of  the  Pope,  was  attempting  to  hold 
to  Roman  Catholicism  at  the  point  of  the  sword.  Then,  too,  England 
coveted  the  Spanish  American  frontier  and  the  wonderful  treasure  ships. 
She  was  fired  with  a  desire  for  colonies  of  her  own. 

Said  Richard  Hakluyt,  a  leader  in  the  movement  in  favor  of  an  Eng 
lish  onslaught  on  the  Spanish  dominions  over  the  sea:  "The  plantinge 
of  twoo  or  three  strong  fortes  upon  some  goodd  havens    The  advice 
(whereof  there  is  a  greate  store)  betweene  Florida  and  Cape    of  Richard 
Briton,   would  be  a  matter  in  shorte  space  of  greater 
domage  as  well  to  his  flete  as  to  his  westerne  Indies;  for  wee  shoulde 
not  onely  often  tymes  indaunger  his  flete  in  the  returne  thereof,  but 
also  in  fewe  yeres  put  him  in  hazarde  in  loosinge  some  parte  of  Nova 
Hispania.  —  If  you  touche  him  in  the  Indies,  you  touche  the  apple  of 
his  eye;  for  take  away  his  treasure,  which  is  nervus  belli,  and  which  he 
hath  almoste  oute  of  his  West  Indies,  his  olde  bandes  of  souldiers  will 

33 


THE  EUROPEAN  COLONIES 


soone  be  dissolved,  his  purposes  defeated,  his  power  and  strengthe 
diminished,  his  pride  abated,  and  his  tyranie  utterly  suppressed." 
Sir  John  Hawkins,  in  his  good  bark  the  Jesus,  on  which  devout 
prayers  were  said  every  morning  and  every  night,  was  among  the  first 
The  attacks  Englishmen  to  kidnap  the  blacks  in  Africa  and  carry 
of  the  English  them  to  America  for  sale.  In  defiance  of  every  prohibi 
tion  he  boldly  entered  the  guarded  Spanish  ports  in  pur 
suit  of  his  trade,  to  the  King  of  Spain's  sore  displeasure.  One  of  his 
bravest  associates  was  Sir  Francis  Drake,  and  together  they  engaged 
in  many  a  combat  with  the 
Spaniards.  In  a  sea  fight  off 
the  present  site  of  Vera  Cruz, 
Mexico,  the  Spaniards  cap 
tured  seventy  Englishmen, 
burned  three  at  the  stake  for 
their  Protestant  faith,  and 
cruelly  flogged  the  rest  and 
sent  them  to  the  galleys  for 
life. 

In  the  Pelican,  1577-1580, 
Drake  passed  through  the 
Circumnavi-  Straits  of  Magel- 
gation  of  the  ian  to  plunder  the 
Spanish  in  Peru 
on  the  west  coast 
of  South  America.  He  raided 
various  towns,  overhauled 
many  ships,  and  took  as  his 
richest  prize  the  treasure  ship, 
Cacafuega,  which  was  on  its 
way  from  Peru  to  Panama. 

The  booty  from  this  one  ship  amounted  to  twenty-six  tons  of  silver 
and  eighty  pounds  of  gold,  while  the  total  value  of  Drake's  booty  on 
the  entire  voyage  was  well  up  in  the  millions  of  dollars.  To  guard 
this  vast  treasure  from  the  Spaniards,  who,  it  was  expected,  would  lie 
in  wait  for  the  despoilers  on  their  return,  necessitated  a  homeward 
voyage  by  unfrequented  paths.  The  circumnavigation  of  the  globe 
was  decided  upon,  and  after  sailing  far  north  in  the  Pacific  and  returning 
to  somewhere  near  the  present  site  of  San  Francisco,  the  doughty 
captain  and  his  comrades  turned  west  into  the  all  but  unknown  waters, 
rounded  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  and  came  back  to  England.  His 
was  the  second  voyage  around  the  world.  So  far  had  the  hostility 


globe  by  the 
sea  rover, 
Drake. 


SIR  FRANCIS  DRAKE 
From  an  engraving  published  in  1587 


UNDER  QUEEN  ELIZABETH 


35 


of  England  and  Spain  proceeded  by  this  time  that  Queen  Elizabeth 

not  only  refused  to  censure  Drake  for  his  attacks  on  a  power  with 

which   England 

was  nominally  at 

peace,   but  even 

took  a  share  of 

the      booty. 

Another      of 

Drake's    exploits. 

took  place  off  the 

coast  of    Spain 

itself,    where    he 

sailed    into    the 

harbor  of  Cadiz, 

defeated  the  war 

ships   on   guard, 

burned     more 

than    a  hundred 

vessels,  filled  his 

own    ships    with 

booty,    and    got 

away  in  safety.     In  derision  it  was  said  at  the  time  that  the  English 

captain  had  "  singed  the  King  of  Spain's  beard." 

It  was  this  gathering  spirit  of  "Westward  Ho!"  that  nerved  Fro- 
bisher,   Davis,   Baffin,   and   Hudson   to   venture   into   the   forbidden 
Spanish  realms  in  search  of  the  Northwest  Passage  to    "Westward 
Asia,  and  that  inspired  the  freebooters  Hawkins,  Drake,    Ho!" 
and  their  followers  to  defiance  of  the  Spanish  King;  in  this   spirit, 
too,    other    daring    and    impatient    Englishmen    sought     to    follow 
Hakluyt's  advice  to  plant   utwoo  or  three  strong  fortes  and  some 
goodd  havens  (whereof  there  is  greate  store)  betweene  Florida   and 
Cape  Breton." 

With  the  Queen's  permission,  Sir  Humphrey  Gilbert  made  unsuc 
cessful  attempts,    1578-1583,  to  found  a  settlement  in 
Newfoundland,   but  at  last  lost  his  life    in    shipwreck.   GtiberHn  * 


DRAKE'S  "PELICAN"  OR  "GOLDEN  HIND" 
In  this  he  sailed  round  the  world,  1577-1580 


"The  way  to  Heaven  is  as  near  by  sea  as  by  land,"  he 

cried  out  as  he  sank  beneath  the  waves.     He  had  prob 

ably  selected  this  northern  land  for  his  settlement,  because  of  all  places 

on  the  coast  it  seemed  least  exposed  to  attack  by  the  Spaniards  from 

the  south. 

England  had  no  more  ardent  expansionist,  Spain  no  greater  enemy, 
than  Gilbert's  half-brother,  Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  to  whom  the  former's 


THE  EUROPEAN  COLONIES 


Sir  Walter 
Raleigh's 
attempts  to 
colonize  in 
North 
Carolina. 


rights  were  now  given.  He  sent  colonists  out  in  1584  and  in  1585 
to  what  is  now  North  Carolina,  but  both  expeditions 
failed  and  returned  to  England.  One  hundred  and  fifty 
men  and  women,  whom  he  sent  on  a  third  expedition 
to  the  same  coast,  ut 
terly  disappeared,  and 
have  come  to  be  known  as  the  "lost 
colony."  In  this  unfortunate  com 
pany  was  little  Virginia  Dare,  the 
first  child  born  of  English  parents 
within  the  present  limits  of  the 
United  States.  His  grant  of  land, 
which  included  the  entire  seaboard 
north  from  Florida,  though  still 
claimed  by  Spain,  Raleigh  named 
Virginia  in  honor  of  Elizabeth,  the 
virgin  queen;  in  spite  of  the  failure 
of  his  own  attempts  at  colonization, 
he  declared  of  the  new  land,  "I 
shall  yet  live  to  see  it  an  English 
nation." 

This  persistent  English  challenge 

of  Spain's  supremacy  in  the  new  world,  as  well  as  the  continued  col 
lisions  of  the  two  powers  in  the  politics  of  Europe,  por 
tended  a  terrible  struggle.  In  the  year  1588  Span; 
collected  the  Invincible  Armada,  the  largest  fleet  evei 
assembled  in  the  world's  history  to  that  time,  and  sent  it 
against  her  rival.  One  hundred  and  thirty  Spanish  ships  swept 
proudly  up  the  English  Channel,  bearing  three  thousand  cannon  and 
thirty  thousand  men,  while  seventeen  thousand  Spanish  veterans 
waited  in  the  near-by  Netherlands,  ready  at  the  first  opportunity  to 
cross  over  to  the  coast  of  England  and  reduce  her  to  the  power  of 
Spain.  The  fate  of  England  hung  in  the  balance,  but  she  herself  had 
mustered  an  enormous  fleet  mighty  in  the  power  of  its  cannon  and  in 
the  practical  seamanship  of  its  sailors.  Chief  in  command  of  the 
English  fleet  was  Lord  Howard  of  Effingham,  and  at  his  side  fought 
Hawkins,  Drake,  and  Frobisher.  After  fearful  storms  at  sea  and  des 
perate  fighting  the  would-be  raiders  were  utterly  put  to  rout,  with  a 
loss  of  over  eight  thousand  men  against  an  English  loss  of  scarcely 
one  hundred. 

An  English  frontier  in  America  was  made  possible  by  this  victory, 
for  with  the  sea  power  of  her  rival  destroyed  England's  colonists  could 


SIR  WALTER  RALEIGH 


The  defeat 
of  Spain's 
Invincible 
Armada. 


UNDER  QUEEN 'ELIZABETH  37 

venture  over  the  ocean  and  struggle  for  their  share  of  the  new  world 
with  a  reasonable  prospect  of  success.     The   next  year    ^  En  ^ 
the  English  further  crushed   the  defeated  adversary  by    frontier  in 
destroying  over  eight  hundred  Spanish  commercial   ves- 
sels  in  various  parts  of  the  globe. 

Sir  Walter  Raleigh  now  left  for  the  west  in  person.  In  -1595  he 
reached  the  northern  shores  of  South  America,  and  returning  wrote 
of  "a  large,  rich,  and  beautiful  empire,  with  the  golden  Attempts  to 
city  of  Manoa,  which  the  Spaniards  call  El  Dorado." 
This  land  had  "more  quantities  of  gold  by  manifold  than  South 
the  best  part  of  the  Indies  or  Peru;  it  had  more  great  Amenca- 
cities  than  even  Peru  had  when  it  flourished  most."  The  son  of 
Mary,  Queen  of  Scots,  who  upon  the  death  of  Elizabeth  in  1603 
became  James  I  of  England,  for  reasons  connected  with  European 
politics  adopted  the  policy  of  cultivating  friendship  with  Spain;  and 
by  his  orders,  on  a  trumped-up  charge  of  treason,  the  promoter  of  the 
incursions  into  Spanish  America  was  thrown  into  prison,  where  he 
languished  for  twelve  years.  In  the  interval,  however,  a  half  score 
English  expeditions  got  away  to  search  for  El  Dorado,  and  Raleigh 
himself  was  finally  released  and  promised  pardon  if  he  would  find 
it.  He  journeyed  again  to  the  northern  shores  of  South  America 
in  1617,  but  found  no  treasure  city  and  returned  home  to  lose  his 
head  on  the  block  under  the  old  charge  of  treason.  The  English 
then  abandoned  South  America,  disgusted  at  their  failure  and 
well  content  to  refrain  from  offering  further  offense  to  Spain  in  that 
quarter. 

During  these  years  other  Englishmen  had  been  visiting  the  shores  of 
northern  "Virginia,"  on  the  coast  of  what  was  soon  to  be  called  New 
England,  and  fishermen  from  Europe  were  resorting  to  Early  voyages 
these  parts  in  increasing  numbers.  The  explorer,  Barthol-  to  New 
omew  Gosnold,  with  a  handful  of  followers,  sailed  into  England- 
Buzzard's  Bay  in  1602,  but  returned  without  making  a  settlement. 
The  next  year  Martin  Pring  visited  the  same  shores,  followed  in  1605 
by  George  Weymouth,  who  explored  particularly  the  coast  of  Maine. 
Though  no  settlements  were  as  yet  established  in  New  England,  these 
three  voyages  resulted  in  increasing  the  interest  of  Englishmen  in 
that  region. 

VIRCxINIA 

A  change  was  coming  over  the  colonizing  activities  of  the  English. 
:>mall  expeditions  sent  out  by  individuals  had  proved  inadequate  to 
cope  with  the  difficulties  encountered,  and  were  being  succeeded  by 


38  THE  EUROPEAN  COLONIES 

expeditions  representing  companies  of  men,  whose  combined  capital 
and  resources  would  mean  increased  efficiency.  By  the  Virginia  char- 
The  early  ter>  or  grant  of  privileges,  of  the  year  1606,  King  James 
charters  of  created  two  companies.  To  one,  the  London  Company, 
made  up  of  men  living  near  London,  he  gave  the  right 
to  colonize  in  Virginia  between  the  thirty-fourth  and  the  thirty-eighth 
degrees  north  latitude,  which  was,  roughly  speaking,  between  Cape 
Fear  and  the  Potomac  River;  and  the  other,  called  the  Plymouth 
Company,  composed  of  men  who  lived  near  Plymouth  in  England,  re 
ceived  the  right  to  colonize  between  the  forty-first  and  the  forty-fifth 
degrees  north  latitude,  which  was  approximately  from  the  mouth  of 
the  Hudson  River  to  the  Bay  of  Fundy.  The  land  between  the  thirty- 
eighth  and  the  forty-first  degrees  was  to  be  open  to  both  companies, 
save  that  neither  could  make  a  settlement  in  this  part  within  one 
hundred  miles  of  the  other.  A  second  charter,  granted  to  the  Lon 
don  Company  in  1609,  added  the  following  confusing  words  in  de 
scription  of  the  boundaries  of  its  grant,  land  two  hundred  miles 
north  and  south  of  Point  Comfort,  lying  ....  up  into  the  Land, 
throughout  from  Sea  to  Sea,  West,  and  Northwest,  which  were  later  in 
terpreted  as  granting  to  this  colony  control  of  the  territory  northwest 
of  the  Ohio  River. 

Both  the  London  Company  and  the  Plymouth  Company  sent  out 
settlers  in  the  year  1607;  and  both  at  the  start  met  with  bad  luck. 

Under   the   patronage   of   the   London    Company,    three 
The  ill  luck  .  ,         ,      ,         ,  £  ,   i 

of  the  first        small  vessels,  bearing  one  hundred  and  five  settlers,  crossed 

Jamestown**  the  Atlantic>  and>  storm-driven,  sought  the  quiet  waters  of 
a  river  which  in  honor  of  their  King  they  called  the  James, 
and  on  its  banks,  thirty-two  miles  from  the  mouth,  they  founded 
Jamestown.  The  chance  selection  of  the  site  was  unfortunate,  for 
the  town  was  surrounded  on  all  sides  by  low-lying  swamps,  the  fever 
and  ague  from  which  reaped  an  immediate  harvest  of  human  lives. 
Furthermore,  over  one-half  of  the  company  were  " gentlemen"  so- 
called,  men  without  any  definite  occupation,  who  scorned  hard  work, 
while  those  who  were  willing  to  work  had  little  incentive  to  do  so,  inas 
much  as  they  were  obliged  to  throw  the  product  of  their  labor  into  the 
common  store,  from  which  all  alike,  lazy  as  well  as  thrifty,  drew  equal 
shares.  In  this  case,  at  least,  communism  proved  to  be  the  enemy  of 
hard  work.  There  was,  too,  the  ever-present  peril  of  the  hostile  na 
tives.  Of  the  1200  emigrants  of  1619-1620,  1000  died  on  the  voyage 
or  in  the  colony  within  one  year;  in  1622-1623,  the  Indians  massacred 
347,  and  1000  died  of  disease  or  starvation. 

The  one  strong  man  in  the  beginning  of  the  settlement  was  Captain 


UNDER  THE   EARLY    STUARTS 


39 


John  Smith,  whose  wise,  fearless,  and  energetic  measures  as  president 
of  the  governing  council  of  the  colony  probably  saved  the  community 
from  the  fate  of  the  near-by  Raleigh  settlements.     Had    captain 
not  Smith  "striven,  fought,  and  endured  as  he  did,  the    John  Smith, 
present  United  States  of  America  might  never  have  come  into  existence," 
says  one  writer,  for  it  was  unde 
niably  the  ultimate  success  of  his 
colony  that  encouraged  the  Eng 
lish  to   further    efforts.     Before 
coming  to   America  Smith  had 
roamed  over  the  various  coun 
tries  of  Europe  as   a  soldier  of 
fortune  in  search  of  adventure, 
but  here  in  the  wilderness  he  was 
an  example  of  industry    to  all. 
He  compelled  the  " gentlemen" 
to  work  with  their  hands,  con- 
ducted   exploring   expeditions, 
and  carried  on  successful  nego 
tiations  with  the  Indians  for  the 
sorely,  needed  Indian  corn.     He 
had    information    of    the    great 
river,  soon  to  be  known  as  the 
Hudson,  before  Hudson  started 
on  his  memorable  exploration  of  JOHN  SMITH 

that  waterway,  as  appears  in  his 

letters  to  Hudson  on  geographical  matters.  In  the  fall  of  1609,  because 
of  a  wound  which  he  had  received,  Smith  left  Virginia,  never  to  return, 
probably  with  the  conviction  that  the  prospects  of  the  colony  were 
dark.  Later  he  explored  the  New  England  coast  and  the  West  Indies. 
His  motto,  "To  Christ  and  my  country  a  true  soldier  and  faithful 
servant,"  was  typical  of  the  man. 

Gloomy  days  followed  for  Jamestown  upon  the  departure  of  Smith. 
Of  the  five  hundred  inhabitants  whom  he  left  only  sixty  were  living 
in  the  following  spring.  After  this  "starving  time"  the 
survivors  were  on  the  point  of  abandoning  the  enterprise, 
when  Lord  Delaware,  a  governor  appointed  by  the  Com 
pany,  appeared  at  the  mouth  of  the  river  with  a  fleet  from  England, 
bringing  new  colonists  and  an  abundance. of  supplies.  His  rule  and 
that  of  Sir  Thomas  Dale,  who  followed  him  and  succeeded  in  breaking 
up  communism,  brought  the  little  settlement  through  its  dark  period, 
and  later  the  cultivation  of  tobacco  ushered  in  prosperity. 


Other  lead 
ers  in  early 
Virginia. 


*o  THE  EUROPEAN  COLONIES 

The  native  tobacco  proved  to  be  the  most  suitable  crop  for  the  soil 
of  Virginia.  Its  cultivation,  first  begun  systematically  by  Sir  John 
Tobacco  Rolfe,  brought  a  better  class  of  colonists,  as  soon  as  it 

culture.  became  apparent  that  fortunes,  after  all,  could  be  made 

in  Virginia.  Columbus  himself  had  been  the  discoverer  of  tobacco 
and  had  introduced  its  use  into  Europe.  To  stop  the  spread  of  the 
habit  in  England,  King  James  wrote,  "A  Counterblaste  To  Tobacco," 
in  which  he  designated  tobacco  smoking  as  "the  greatest  sin";  yet 
the  demand  for  tobacco  in  England  and  the  supply  in  America  went 
on  increasing.  The  shipment  of  40,000  pounds  in  1619  reached 
1,500,000  pounds  annually  in  a  few  years. 

Dutch  traders  engaged  in  bringing  African  slaves  to  the  Spanish 
settlements  farther  south,  where  such  labor  had  proved  distinctly 
Slavery  in  profitable  from  an  economic  point  of  view,  unloaded  the 
Virginia.  first  cargO  of  negro  slaves  in  Virginia  in  1619,  and  from  this 

event  the  institution  of  black  slavery  in  the  United  States  took  its  begin 
ning.  Few  at  the  time  saw  anything  questionable  in  the  system.  By 
1660  Virginia  had  two  thousand  negro  slaves  and  four  times  that 
number  of  "indentured  servants,"  the  latter  being  poor  whites  who 
paid  their  transportation  charges  from  Europe  by  binding  themselves 
out  to  a  form  of  slavery  for  a  term  of  years. 

In  the  same  year,  1619,  the  people  of  Virginia  for  the  first  time 

took  part  in  the  making  of  their  own  laws,  when,  at  the  bidding  of  the 

Company,  they  sent  two  representatives  from  each  town 

legislative         and  plantation  to  form  a  House  of  Burgesses,  which  was 

assembly  in  to  ^e  their  legislature.  Twenty-two  members  came 
America.  . 

together  in  the  church  at  Jamestown  in  the  presence  of 

the  governor  of  the  colony,  and  after  prayer  by  the  minister  proceeded 
to  business  "  to  the  glory  of  God  and  the  good  of  this  plantation."  The 
first  laws  enacted  punished  "idleness,  gaming,  drunkenness,  and  excess 
in  apparell,"  ordered  every  householder  to  plant  corn,  mulberry  trees, 
flax,  hemp,  and  grapevines,  and  commanded  all  to  attend  divine  serv 
ice  on  the  Sabbath  on  pain  of  heavy  fines.  This  beginning  of  popular 
government  on  the  frontier,  although  originating  not  in  the  insistent 
demands  of  the  settlers  themselves  but  in  the  provisions  of  the  London 
Company  for  their  colonists,  ushered  in  a  new  epoch  in  colonial  admin 
istration.  The  same  idea  of  the  right  of  the  people  to  make  their  own 
.laws  later  prevailed  throughout  all  the  English  colonies  in  America  and 
became  the  basis  both  of  the  present  state  governments  and  of  the 
Federal  government  of  the  United  States. 

After  seventeen  years  of  control  in  Virginia,  the  London  Company 
was  deprived  of  its  charter  by  the  King  in  1624  and  relieved  of  all 


UNDER   THE    EARLY    STUARTS  41 

further  responsibility  for  the  Virginia  settlers.     Instead  of  receiving 
appointment  from   the   Company,  the   governor   of  the    Change  of 
colony  was  now  appointed  by  the  King,  who  assumed  com-    government 
plete  control.     Virginia  therefore  became  a  royal  colony, 
whereas  so  long  as  it  was  governed  by  a  company  or  corporation  it  had 


JAMESTOWN,  VA.,  IN  1622 
From  an  old  drawing  printed  at  Leyden  by  Peter  Vander,  1707. 

constituted  a  corporate  colony.  In  taking  this  step  His  Majesty  was 
doubtless  moved  by  the  fact  that  his  Puritan  enemies,  who  had  by  this 
time  become  a  troublesome  factor  in  English  politics,  had  gained  the 
ascendency  in  the  councils  of  the  London  Company  and  had  granted 
to  the  colonists  their  popular  law-making  assembly.  James  was  doing 
all  that  he  could  in  England  to  curb  -the  House  of  Commons,  and  the 
setting  up  of  a  similar  representative  law-making  body  in  an  English 
colony  must  have  been  repugnant  to  him.  In  rescinding  the  charter 
of  the  Company  the  King  did  not,  however,  do  away  with  the  Vir 
ginia  legislature.  He  probably  intended  to  take  this  step,  but  he  died 
the  following  year,  before  any  definite  action  was  taken.  His  son  and 
successor,  Charles  I,  retained  the  House  of  Burgesses,  probably  moved 
by  the  hope  of  securing  from  it  a  monopoly  of  the  increasingly  profit 
able  tobacco  trade. 

NEW  ENGLAND 

It  will  be  recalled  that  when  the  London  Company  planted  its  first 
settlers  on  the  James  in  1607,  the  Plymouth  Company  set  out  at  the 
same  time  to  make  a  settlement  in  the  northern  part  of  the  King's 


42  THE  EUROPEAN  COLONIES 

Virginian  domain.  The  former,  as  we  have  seen,  succeeded  in  its 
The  failure  of  enterprise  after  serious  discouragements  at  the  start,  but 
the^Piymouth  the  latter  failed  miserably.  Under  the  leadership  of 
northern7"  George  Popham,  brother  of  the  Chief  Justice  of  Eng- 
Virginia.  landj  the  first  settlers  of  the  Plymouth  Company  reached 

the  mouth  of  the  Kennebec  River  on  the  coast  of  Maine,  built  a  fort 
in  which  they  passed  the  winter,  and  the  next  spring  returned  to 
England.  One  bleak  Maine  winter  was  enough  for  them.  Seven 
years  later,  at  the  instigation  of  Sir  Ferdinando  Gorges,  the  Plym 
outh  Company  sent  John  Smith,  the  hero  of  early  Virginia,  to  ex 
plore  the  coast  line  that  fell  within  its  grant.  He  skirted  along  the 
coast  and  completed  an  excellent  map,  in  which  he  made  the  first  use 
of  such  common  geographical  terms  as  New  England,  Plymouth, 
Cape  Ann,  Cambridge,  and  Charles  River;  in  his  narrative,  too,  are 
found  the  Indian  names  "Pennobscot,"  "Pemmayquid,"  "  Sagadahock," 
"Kenebecka,"  and  "Massachusets."  Champlain  had  gone  over 
the  same  ground  only  a  few  years  before  in  behalf  of  the  King  of 
France.  The  Plymouth  Company  did  not  try  to  follow  up  Smith's 
explorations  by  a  second  attempt  at  settlement,  and  in  1620  it  lost  its 
charter  to  another  company,  known  as  the  Council  for  New  England, 
in  which,  as  in  its  predecessor,  Sir  Ferdinando  Gorges  was  the  leading 
spirit. 

The  colony  of  Plymouth,  which  was  the  first  permanent  colony  set 
up  in  New  England,  was  sent  out  neither  by  the  Plymouth  Company 
Religious  nor  by  the  Council  for  New  England.  It  owed  its  origin 
persecution  to  religious  persecution.  Such  was  the  intolerarit  spirit 
in  England.  common  in  the  England  of  the  seventeenth  century,  that 
thousands  who  could  not  follow  the  majority  in  their  religious  beliefs 
and  practices  fled  for  freedom  to  the  frontier  in  America  as  to  a  place 
of  refuge.  As  has  been  said,  "Ever  since  the  age  of  stone  hatchets, 
colony  planters  have  been  drawn  from  the  ranks  of  the  uneasy." 

After  Martin  Luther  broke  away  from  the  Roman  Catholic  Church 
in  Germany  in  the  early  part  of  the  sixteenth  century  and  formed  the 
The  effects  in  beginning  of  the  Protestant  group  of  churches,  a  quarrel 
tti^Protes-  arose  between  KinS  Henry  VIII  of  England  and  the 
tant  Refor-  Pope,  which  ended  in  the  formation  of  the  present  Church 
mation.  of  England,  quite  independent  of  the  Pope  at  Rome. 

Dissension  arose  as  to  what  should  be  the  nature  of  the  new  church. 
King  Edward  VI,  1547-1553,  was  in  general  loyal  to  the  new  church  as 
his  father  had  established  it.  His  sister,  Queen  Mary,  1553-1558? 
on  the  other  hand,  was  an  ardent  Roman  Catholic  and  sought  to  rein 
state  the  power  of  the  Pope  throughout  the  realm.  Her  efforts  failed, 


UNDER  THE   EARLY    STUARTS  43 

though  she  sought  to  enforce  them  by  bitter  persecutions  and  even 
burnings  at  the  stake.  Under  Queen  Elizabeth,  1558-1603,  the  third 
and  last  of  the  children  of  Henry  VIII  to  ascend  the  throne,  the  Act 
of  Supremacy  was  passed  by  Parliament,  definitely  divorcing  the  Eng 
lish  Church  from  Rome,  and  requiring  all  the  clergy  and  all  holding 
political  office  to  recognize  the  Queen  as  "the  Supreme  Governor"  of 
the  Church.  The  Act  of  Uniformity  provided  for  uniformity  in  wor 
ship,  requiring  the  use  of  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer  and  enacting 
that  the  ornaments  of  the  church  and  the  vestments  of  the  clergy 
should  be  those  sanctioned  under  Edward  VI. 

These  arrangements  did  not  satisfy  all  the  reformers.  The  Puritans 
originated  in  the  class  of  Protestants,  who  fled  for  temporary  refuge 
from  the  persecutions  of  "  Bloody  Mary"  to  various  The  Puritans 
German,  Dutch,  and  French  towns,  and  to  Geneva,  Swit-  and  the 
zerland,  where  they  imbibed  the  religious  views  of  John 
Calvin.  Returning  to  their  English  homes  at  the  accession  of  Eliza 
beth,  they  contended  for  a  purer  prayer  book  and  a  purer  form  of  wor 
ship,  as  they  expressed  it.  Though  willing  to  accept  a  state  church 
and  to  pay  taxes  for  its  support,  they  desired  to  purify  it  of  ceremonies 
that  reminded  them  of  the  Roman  Church;  they  opposed  the  use  of  the 
cap  and  the  surplice  in  the  church  services,  the  making  of  the  sign  of 
the  cross,  the  use  of  the  ring  in  the  marriage  ceremony,  and  kneeling 
at  the  sacrament.  The  Queen  and  the  majority  of  the  nation  clung 
to  these  forms  because  they  loved  them  as  a  part  of  the  church  wor 
ship.  Most  of  the  Puritans  in  Elizabeth's  time  had  not  reached  the 
point  of  separation  from  the  Established  Church.  That  branch  of 
the  Puritans,  however,  called  Independents  or  Separatists,  not  only 
contended  for  a  purer  form  of  worship,  but  went  farther  and  insisted 
that  each  congregation  should  be  complete  in  itself  and  govern  itself, 
independent  of  outside  control.  Unlike  the  majority,  they  were  not 
willing  to  be  included  within  the  Established  Church,  but  wished  to 
separate  from  it  entirely  and  form  a  new  church. 

Only  the  strongest-minded  and  the  stoutest-hearted  took  the  radical 
separatist  position,  and  faced  the  fines,  imprisonment,  and  even  death 
which  such  a  course  often  entailed.  Loyalty  to  the 
Established  Church  was  regarded  largely  as  identical  with  Of  t 


loyalty  to  the  sovereign,  its  head,  and  an.  attempt  was 

made  to  compel  all  to  obey  the  royal  commands  in  ecclesi 

astical  as  well  as  in  civil  affairs,  lest  disobedience  in  church  matters,  if 

unchecked,  lead  to  disobedience  in  civil  matters  and  even  to  the  down 

fall  of  the  government.     The  procession  of  exiles  from  England  for 

conscience'  sake  started  in  the  early  days  of  Elizabeth's  reign,  when  in- 


44 


THE  EUROPEAN  COLONIES 


dividual  Separatists  from  time  to  time  sought  refuge  in  Holland,  then 
the  most  tolerant  of  civilized  countries  in  matters  of  religion.  Year  by 
year  they  went  in  larger  numbers.  Elizabeth's  successor,  James  I,  re 
jected  a  petition  of  the  Puritans  praying  for  changes  in  the  church,  and 
scornfully  declared  that  he  would  make  all  conform  to  the  established 


THE  BREWSTER  HOUSE,  SCROOBY,  ENGLAND 

The  house  of  William  Brewster  was  the  first  house  of  worship  of  the  Scrooby 
church  (organized  in  1606),  the  members  of  which  fled  to  Holland  in  1608,  and 
finally  emigrated  to  New  England  in  1620. 

church  or  "harry  them  out  of  the  land."  In  1608  the  entire  con 
gregation  of  a  country  church  at  Scrooby,  in  the  north  central  part  of 
England,  reenforced  by  individuals  from  different  sections  of  the 
country,  moved  to  Leyden,  Holland,  where  they  formed  a  church  and 
remained  for  twelve  years.  Although  they  enjoyed  complete  freedom 
of  worship  in  their  new  home,  as  true  sons  of  Old  England  the  refugees 
saw  with  regret  that  their  children  were  turning  from  their  native 
language  to  that  of  the  Dutch  and  were  losing  the  manners  and  cus 
toms  of  England.  Some  of  them,  too,  who  were  not  prosperous  in 
business,  desired  to  try  their  fortunes  elsewhere,  and  some  were  eager 
to  spread  the  Gospel  to  the  heathen  of  America.  So  they  decided  to 
become  pilgrims  again  and  seek  a  new  home  across  the  seas. 

The  exiles  were  attracted  by  the  stories  of  the  fertility  of  the  soil 
and  the  favorable  climate  of  the  northern  shores  of  South  America, 
and  in  making  their  plans  they  first  considered  these 
regions  as  a  possible  place  of  settlement,  but  fearing  the 
Spaniards  they  gave  this  up  and  selected  a  spot  on  the 
coast  of  North  America  near  the  mouth  of  the  Hudson 
River.  Though  they  set  sail  as  voluntary  colonists,  under  the 


The  setting 
out  of  the 
Pilgrims  to 
America. 


UNDER  THE   EARLY    STUARTS  45 

patronage  of  no  company,  the  London  Company  gave  its  consent 
to  their  choice  of  location,  which  came  within  its  grant;  and  further 
more,  a  group  of  London  merchants  advanced  the  needed  funds  as  a 
business  venture.  The  emigrants  went  first  to  England  and  embarked 
for  their  long  voyage  at  Southampton  in  1620  on  the  Speedwell  and 
the  Mayflower;  but  the  former  was  soon  found  to  be  unsea worthy,  and 
the  two  vessels  put  in  at  Plymouth,  wrhere  as  many  as  could  reembarked 
on  the  Mayflower  alone. 

The  voyage  proved  a  difficult  one.  Near  its  end  "shoulds  and 
roring  breakers"  barred  the  way  to  the  intended  destination,  so  that 
of  necessity  plans  were  changed  and  the  Mayflower  Arrival  in 
finally  "rid  in  saftie"  off  Cape  Cod,  at  what  is  now  America- 
Provincetown,  Massachusetts,  entirely  outside  the  domain  'of  the 
London  Company.  "Being  thus  arived  in  a  good  harbor  and  brought 
safe  to  land,  they  fell  upon  their  knees  and  blessed  ye  God  of  heaven, 
who  had  brought  them  over  ye  vast  &  furious  ocean,  and  delivered 
them  from  all  ye  periles  and  miseries  thereof,  againe  to  set  their  feete 
on  ye  firme  and  stable  earth,  their  proper  elemente."  They  had  come 
to  their  journey's  end  not  in  the  pleasant  springtime,  as  was  the  lot 
of  the  newcomers  at  Jamestown,  but  in  cold  and  bleak  November. 
The  Mayflower  remained  off  Provincetown  for  more  than  a  month, 
and  here,  in  the  little  ship,  Peregrine  White  was  born,  the  first  New 
Englander. 

When   on   December    21    they   arrived   at   Plymouth,   which   was 
selected  as  the  permanent  site  of  the  new  home,  there  was  still  no 
general  landing;  the  women  and  children  and  the  dis-    xhe  settle- 
abled  men  spent  the  entire  winter  on  shipboard,  while    ment  at 
the  able-bodied  men  passed  a  few  hours  every  day  on  land,    Plymouth- 
building  log  huts.    Before  spring  was  over  one-half  the  little  company  of 
one  hundred  and  two  people  were  dead.     "It  pleased  God  to  visit  us 
with  death  daily,  and  with  so  generall  a  disease  that  the  living  were 
scarce  able  to  burie  the  dead,"  said  their  own  historian,  Governor 
Bradford.     For  a  number  of  years  they  suffered  from  the  evils  of  com 
munism,  as  did  the  settlers  in  Jamestown. 

Early  in  the  first  spring  the  hearts  of  the  Pilgrims  were  surprised 
and  gladdened  by  the  greeting  of  a  friendly  Indian,  who  approached 
with  the  words,  "Welcome,  Englishmen!"  an  expression  that  he  had 
probably  learned  from  English  fishermen  on  the  coast  of  Maine.  His 
name  was  Samoset;  and  Samoset  brought  Squanto,  who  taught  the 
newcomers  to  raise  the  native  Indian  corn;  Squanto  in  turn  brought 
Massasoit,  a  chief  of  the  tribe  of  the  Wampanoags,  who  made  with  the 
settlers  a  friendly  treaty  of  peace  which  was  kept  for  over  fifty  years. 


46 


THE  EUROPEAN  COLONIES 


Among  the  leaders  of  the  Pilgrims  were  William  Brewster,  the  elder, 
who  remained  an  influential  colonist  for  many  years  in  the  new  home; 
The  lead-  Jonn  Carver,  the  first  governor,  who  died  during  the  hard 
ships  of  the  first  winter;  William  Bradford,  the  second  gov 
ernor  and  historian  of  the  colony;  Miles  Standish,  their  mili 
tary  leader;  and  Edward  Winslow,  Governor  Bradford's  successor. 


lead 
ers  of  the 
Pilgrims. 


Windsoi 
'    Hartford  0) 

CONNECTICUT 
Wethersfielrl 


EARLY  NEW  ENGLAND 


The  people  of  the  United  States  look  back  with  admiration  upon 
the  Pilgrim  Fathers,  because  as  a  whole,  amid  trying  circumstances, 
The  democ-  they  displayed  unusually  high  ideals,  unconquerable  cour- 
racy  of  the  age,  and  a  wonderful  love  of  democracy.  "It  is  not  with 
us  as  with  men  whom  small  things  can  discourage,"  wrote 
Bradford.  Left  by  chance  to  themselves  outside  the  limits  of  the  London 
Company,  which  had  given  them  their  right  to  land,  and  without  au 
thority  from  the  King  or  from  the  Council  for  New  England,  within 
whose  grant  by  chance  they  found  themselves,  they  "  solemnly  and  mu 
tually  in  the  presence  of  God  and  one  of  another"  agreed  on  shipboard, 
in  what  is  known  as  the  Mayflower  Compact,  to  set  up  a  pure  democracy, 
in  which  the  people  were  to  make  their  own  laws  and  select  their  own 


UNDER  THE  EARLY  STUARTS  47 

officials.  When  in  twenty  years  there  came  to  be  too  many  voters  for 
all  to  assemble  in  one  place  for  purposes  of  government,  they  adopted 
the  representative  principle  already  in  operation  in  Virginia.  Even 
then  for  a  number  of  years  the  people  of  the  town  of  Plymouth  and  of  the 
surrounding  towns,  which  together  constituted  Plymouth  Colony,  en 
joyed  the  referendum,  that  is,  the  right  to  accept  or  reject  the  laws  passed 
for  them  by  the  legislature.  As  long  as  Plymouth  existed  as  an  inde 
pendent  colony,  up  to  1691,  she  never  possessed  a  charter. 


THE  FIRST  THANKSGIVING  DINNER 

With  portraits  of   the  Pilgrim   Fathers 

From  a  drawing  by  W.  L.  Taylor.     Copyright  by  The  Ladies'  Home  Journal 

King  James  I  zealously  endeavored  to  the  end  of  his  reign  to  carry 
on  the  Established  Church  of  England  as  he  had  received  it  from  Eliz 
abeth;  and,  like  the  latter,  in  carrying  out  his  policy  he 
was  vigorously  opposed   by   the   non-conforming  Puritans  ties  of  King 

and  Separatists.    Under  the  next  King,  Charles  I,  who  sue-  Charles  with 
,   j   ,.     ,    .,  .  '        .  '  the  Puritans, 

ceeded  his  father  James  in  1625,  the  religious  discord  con 
tinued,  and  in  1628  growing  political  discontent  added  to  the  troubles 
of  the  King.  After  waging  a  bitter  quarrel  with  Parliament  over  the 
respective  rights  of  Crown  and  Parliament,  Charles  had  the  humiliation 
of  being  forced  to  sign  the  Petition  of  Right,  the  first  limitation  on  the 
royal  powers  passed  by  Parliament  for  one  hundred  and  fifty  years. 
This  prohibited  to  the  King  certain  longstanding  practices,  to  wit,  cer 
tain  forms  of  taxation,  arbitrary  imprisonment,  billeting  of  soldiers  on 
the  people  and  martial  law  in  time  of  peace.  The  act  was  but  a  temporary 


48  THE  EUROPEAN  COLONIES 

expedient,  for  the  King  broke  it  almost  at  once;  in  fact  he  had  probably 
never  intended  to  keep  it. 

Those  who  had  for  years  stood  out  against  the  King  in  ecclesiastical 
matters,  were  now,  as  their  enemies  had  predicted  would  be  the  case, 
Arbitrary  t^ie  leac^ers  m  the  political  opposition  to  the  King.  In 
government  anger  at  the  stubborn  spirit  displayed  against  him, 
in  England.  Charles  dissolved  Parliament  in  1629  and  imprisoned 
five  of  its  members  who  were  the  most  outspoken  in  their  opposition 


THE  BARKER  HOUSE  AT  PEMBROKE,  MASS. 
TTie  first  house  in  America  of  which  there  is  any  authentic  record.    Built  in  1628. 

to  him.  For  the  next  eleven  years,  1629-1640,  he  ruled  the  kingdom 
without  a  Parliament  and  imposed  arbitrary  taxation  upon  the  people 
without  the  consent  of  their  representatives.  His  two  leading  advisers 
in  the  crisis  were  Sir  Thomas  Wentworth,  later  known  as  the  Earl 
of  Stratford,  and  Archbishop  Laud.  Both  these  statesmen  were  loyal 
Englishmen,  but  their  loyalty  was  to  the  King  and  not  to  the  people. 
The  watchword  of  both  was  "thorough,"  which  meant  unceasing 
persecution  of  their  opponents. 

Rather  than  submit  to  the  new  tyranny,  now  civil  as  well  as  ecclesi 
astic,  from  fifteen  to  twenty  thousand  ''uneasy''  Puritans  migrated 
.          to  eastern  Massachusetts  in  the  short  period  of  ten  years, 
emigration  to    1630-1640.     The  new  colony  of  Massachusetts  Bay  re- 
settsSBahU"       ceived  from  the  Council  of  New  England  a  grant  of  land 
extending  from  three  miles  south  of  the  Charles  River  to 
three  miles  north  of  the  Merrimac  River  and  westward  to  the  South 


UNDER  THE  EARLY  STl  A  : 


Sea.     The   King,  probably  not  knew  a   colony  of  Puritans 

was  to  be  establish^        _  unusually  liberal  char 

acter,  which  practically  t  full  po  to  the 

commercial  company  sending  out  the  colony. 

In   1028,  before  the  charter        -   s  i,  John  Endicott.  with  a 

small  party  of  settlers,  had  founded  Salem  on  Massachu- 
After  the  charter  .rrted,  John  Winthrop,  who  had    Puritan 

been  elected  governor  by  the   M.  Com-    settl*ments. 

pany,  arrived   in    Xew    1     e 
on    June    ir.    i(\;o.   with    i 
ships  and  nine  hundred  colo 
and  Boston.  Xewtown  i  later  C 
bri  Ig  .rlestown.  \Vatertown. 

Roxbury,  Dorchester,   and   other 
near-by   towns  were  quickly 
tied.     Seventeen  vessels  in  all  ar 
rived  from  England  in  this 
bearing    two    thousand     seniors. 
Only    a   few   of    the    m 
found    their    way    to    Plymouth. 
but  there  always  existed  the 
of  feeling  between  Plymouth  and 
Massachusetts  Bay,  for  both 
Pilgrims  and   the    Puritans    were 
of  the  same  sturdy  thrifty  si 
of    English    yeomen,   devoted    to 
similar  religious  and    political 
ideals. 

The  colonists  of  Massachusetts  Bay.  like  their  brethren  at    Plym 
outh,   loved  self-government,  though   they  were   far  from   displaying 
the  spirit  of  democracy  manifested  at   Plymouth.     Like 
Virginia   in   its   earliest    days.    Massachusetts  was  a   cor-    mentEofer 
porate  colony.     Instead  of  remaining  in  England,  as  did    Massachu- 

.      .  »*»••«  setts  ij0y. 

the  menjbers  of  the  company  governing  \  irgima,  certain 
of  the  Massachusetts  company,  legally  empowered  to  carry  on  its 
affairs,  joined  the  emigrants  to  Xew  England  and  brought  their  char 
ter  with  them,  that  they  might  always  have  in  America  legal  proof  of 
their  rights.  The  colony  of  Massachusetts  and  the  present  state  of 
Massachusetts  sprang  from  this  commercial  company. 

The  charter  vested  the  government  of  the  colony  in  the  stock 
holders  of  the  company,  the  freemen  as  they  were  called.  In  1630 
there  were  in  the  colony  only  twelve  of  these  freemen,  that  is,  in  a 


JOHN  \VINTHKOP 


50  THE  EUROPEAN  COLONIES 

cluster  of  settlements  numbering  two  thousand  people,  only  twelve 
were  endowed  with  the  right  to  vote.  The  government  of  the  few 
Aristocracy  was  not  perpetuated.  In  one  month  in  1631  one  hun 
dred  and  eighteen  persons  were  admitted  into  the  com 
pany  as  freemen  with  the  right  to  vote.  It  was  provided 
at  the  same  time  that  in  the  future  only  those  should  be  made  voters 
who  were  members  of  the  Puritan  Church,  for  by  this  time  the  Puritans 
in  America  had  taken  the  separatist  course  of  organizing  their  own 
church.  This  was  not  democracy  in  the  modern  sense,  but  under 
it  the  number  of  voters  gradually  increased.  Governor  John  Winthrop 
defended  the  restriction  of  the  suffrage  in  these  words:  "The  best 
part  is  always  the  least,  and  of  that  least  part  the  wiser  part  is  always 
the  lesser."  It  was  the  original  intention  to  transact  public  business 
in  an  assembly  of  all  the  freemen;  but  as  the  number  of  freemen 
increased  and  the  foundation  of  new  settlements  dispersed  them,  law- 
making  and  the  choosing  of  the  governor  were  left  to  a  board  of  assist 
ants  elected  by  the  freemen.  It  was  even  provided  that  the  assistants 
should  not  be  elected  every  year  but  should  hold  their  seats  during 
good  behavior.  This  was  too  much  like  oligarchy  for  the  independent 
frontiersmen.  When,  at  one  time,  a  tax  was  levied  by  the  assistants, 
the  freemen  of  Watertown  objected  and  insisted  on  a  more  representa 
tive  form  of  government.  Thereupon,  fifteen  years  after  the  adoption 
of  the  representative  principle  in  Virginia,  and  four  years  before  its 
adoption  in  Plymouth,  provision  was  made  that  the  freemen  should 
choose  the  governor  and  the  assistants  each  year,  and  should  send 
delegates  from  each  town  to  the  general  court  or  law-making  body. 
At  first  the  board  of  assistants  and  the  deputies  of  the  towns  met 
together  as  the  general  court,  but  in  1644  they  separated  into  two 
bodies,  the  assistants  forming  the  upper  house  and  the  deputies  the 
lower  house. 

As  in  the  case  of  Massachusetts  Bay  and  of  Plymouth,  it  was 
religious  persecution  that  led  to  the  founding  of  Rhode  Island,  only 
The  found-  this  time  it  was  persecution  as  practiced  by  the  Puritans 
ing  of  Rhode  themselves.  They  had  migrated  to  secure  the  .right  to 
worship  God  as  they  saw  fit,  but  not  with  the  idea  of 
tolerating  in  their  midst  those  desiring  to  worship  in  a  different 
way.  Among  the  first  to  suffer  from  the  rigors  of  the  narrow  Puritanism 
was  a  young  clergyman  named  Roger  Williams.  This  apostle  of  re 
ligious  liberty  deemed  it  wrong  to  swear  an  oath;  he  denied  that  the 
state  had  the  right  to  compel  men  to  be  religious,  and  he  upheld  the 
doctrine  of  the  complete  separation  of  church  and  state.  The  Puritans 
resented  his  stand  on  these  matters,  and  in  the  year  1636  Williams 


UNDER  THE  EARLY  STUARTS 


was  banished  from  the  colony  for  his  too  independent  views.  He 
would  not  return  to  England,  but  with  a  small  following  he  plunged 
farther  into  the  wilderness,  founded  the  new  colony  of  Rhode  Island, 

and  piously  called  the  first  settle 
ment  Providence.  "The  doctrine  of 
persecution  for  the  cause  of  con 
science,"  he  wrote,  "is  most  evidently 
and  lamentably  contrary  to  the  doc 
trine  of  Jesus  Christ." 

The  next  year  Williams  was  joined 
in  his  enterprise  by  Anne  Hutchinson, 
who  with  a  handful  of  Anne  Hutch- 
followers  was  obliged  to  inson- 
leave  Massachusetts  because  she  dis 
agreed  with  the  Puritan  ministers  on 
questions  of  theology,  and  because 
she  practiced  woman's  rights  by 
freely  criticizing  and  discussing  their 
views  in  public.  Mrs.  Hutchinson 
remained  in  Rhode  Island  a  few  years 
and  then  moved  farther  into  the  wil 
derness  to  the  western  part  of  Con 
necticut,  where  she  was  killed  by  the 
Indians.  Of  a  surety  these  colony 
planters  of  Rhode  Island  were 
"drawn  from  the  ranks  of  the  un 
easy." 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  Rhode 
Island  enjoyed  democracy,  and,  as 
long  as  Roger  Williams    The  govern_ 
lived,  religious  freedom,    ment  of 
or,  as  he  called  it,  "soul 
liberty."     After  the  leader's  death, 

the  colony  retrograded  so  far  as  to  exclude  Roman  Catholics.  As 
might  be  expected,  for  many  years  the  orthodox  of  Massachusetts 
would  have  no  dealings  with  the  inhabitants  of  Rhode  Island.  In  the 
first  days  at  Providence,  Williams  and  his  followers  bound  themselves 
together  for  the  purposes  of  civil  government  by  a  compact  similar  to 
that  of  the  Pilgrims  at  Plymouth,  and  proceeded  for  many  years 
without  a  royal  charter. 

Connecticut  also  was  settled  by  the  "uneasy"  people  of  Massa 
chusetts.     Outposts  in  the  rich  valley  of  the  Connecticut  River  had 


ti 


STATUE  OF  ROGER  WILLIAMS 


52  THE  EUROPEAN  COLONIES 

been  set  up  as  early  as  1634.  In  June  of  the  disturbed  year  of  1636, 
soon  after  the  exile  of  Williams,  and  while  the  colony  of  Massachu- 
Another  new  setts  Ba>"  was  lasned  by  tne  growing  controversy  over 
frontier,  Mrs.  Hutchinson,  Thomas  Hooker  of  Newtown  and  his 

entire  congregation  set  out  on  foot  for  the  Connecticut 
valley,  driving  their  cattle  before  them  and  carrying  their  household 
goods  in  wagons.  They  founded  Hartford  on  the  Connecticut,  while 
near-by,  on  the  same  river,  other  congregations  from  Dorchester  and 
Watertown  settled  Windsor  and  Wethersfield.  The  reasons  for  this 
migration  are  not  altogether  plain.  Disapproval  of  religious  intoler 
ance  doubtless  was  a  leading  factor,  and  it  is  known  that  to  Governor 
Winthrop's  position  on  the  suffrage  Hooker  opposed  more  demo 
cratic  sentiments.  "In  matters  which  concern  the  common  good,"  said 
Hooker,  "a  general  council  chosen  by  all,  to  transact  the  business 
which  concerns  all,  I  conceive  most  suitable  to  rule  and  most  safe  for 
the  relief  of  the  whole."  There  may  be  truth,  too,  in  the  assertion 
that  Hooker  was  jealous  of  the  overshadowing  influence  of  his  rival 
fellow-minister,  John  Cotton  of  Boston. 

In  their  new  home  the  refugees  were  more  tolerant  in  religion  than 
were  their  brethren  in  Massachusetts,  and  they  loved  and  practiced  self- 
The  govern-  government.  With  no  authority  but  their  own  desires,  the 
ment  of  three  towns  of  Hartford,  Windsor,  and  Wethersfield  united 

:ut*  themselves  into  a  republic  under  an  instrument  known  as 
the  Fundamental  Orders,  the  first  written  constitution  in  the  history 
of  the  United  States.  Connecticut,  like  Rhode  Island,  conducted  its 
affairs  for  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  without  a  charter. 

The  colony  of  New  Haven  was  founded  in  1638.  The  year  before, 
John  Davenport,  a  Puritan  minister  from  England,  and  Theophilus 
The  New  Eaton,  a  wealthy  merchant  of  his  congregation,  with  a 
Haven  few  followers,  landed  in  Boston,  but  on  account  of  the 

spirit  of  controversy  in  that  town  decided  to  move  on  and 
found  a  settlement  of  their  own.  With  a  keen  eye  to  commercial 
possibilities  they  searched  out  a  good  harbor  and  founded  the  town  of 
New  Haven,  and  here  in  the  wilderness,  under  Eaton  as  the  first 
governor,  they  set  up  a  Bible  Commonwealth,  a  theocracy  more  bigoted 
and  less  democratic  than  Massachusetts  Bay.  Other  towns  sprang 
up,  including  Milford,  Guilford,  Branford,  and  Stamford,  and  all  to 
gether  formed  the  colony  of  New  Haven. 

Early  New  Hampshire  was  settled  largely  by  colonists  from  Massa- 
New  chusetts.  In  1622  the  Council  for  New  England  issued  to 

Hampshire.       John  Mason  and  Sir  Ferdinando  Gorges  a  grant  of  land 
extending  from  the  Merrimac  River  to  the  Kennebec  River.     Mason 


UNDER  THE   EARLY  STUARTS  53 

took  as  his  share  that  part  west  of  the  Piscataqua,  which  developed 
into  New  Hampshire,  Gorges  that  part  east  of  the  Piscataqua  which 
came  to  be  known  as  Maine.  There  were  early  settlements  in  New 
Hampshire  at  the  mouth  of  the  Piscataqua  River,  at  Dover,  and  at 
Exeter,  but  there  was  no  charter  from  the  King,  no  legal  provision  for 
che  government  of  the  land  granted  by  the  Council.  Believing  that 
they  were  outside  the  limits  of  Massachusetts,  the  settlers  of  Exeter, 
under  their  leader,  John  Wheelwright,  a  brother-in-law  of  Mrs.  Anne 
Hutchinson,  drew  up  a  compact  of  government  similar  to  the  May 
flower  Compact.  Inasmuch  as  many  of  the  people  of  Exeter  had  been 
banished  from  Massachusetts,  they  were  probably  glad  in  this  way 
to  take  affairs  into  their  own  hands.  Massachusetts,  however,  pro 
ceeded  to  claim  the  New  Hampshire  towns  as  her  own,  which  she 
could  do  by  virtue  of  the  uncertainty  as  to  her  own  northern  boundary 
line.  It  will  be  recalled  that  by  the  King's  charter  this  line  was  to 
run  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific  from  a  point  three  miles  north  of 
the  Merrimac,  "  to  the  northward  of  the  saide  river  called  Monomack, 
alias  Merrymack,  or  to  the  northward  of  any  and  every  parte  thereof." 
When  Massachusetts  ascertained  that  this  stream  actually  rose  far  in 
the  north,  she  formally  annexed  New  Hampshire  as  coming  within 
her  grant,  and  in  1641  New  Hampshire  ceased  her  protests  against 
the  act  and  became  a  part  of  Massachusetts. 

Gorges  in  Maine  succeeded  where  Mason  in  New  Hampshire 
failed,  so  far  as  royal  favor  was  concerned,  for  Maine  received  a  sepa 
rate  charter  in  1639.  The  new  colony  was  to  extend  from  Maine 
the  Piscataqua  to  the  Kennebec,  and  one  hundred  and 
twenty  miles  inland,  with  Gorges  himself  as  proprietor,  so  that  Maine 
became  a  proprietary  colony  in  distinction  from  a  corporate  or  from 
a  royal  colony.  A  loyal  supporter  of  the  Church  of  England,  Gorges 
was  the  sworn  enemy  of  Puritan  Massachusetts.  Few  were  attracted 
to  Maine,  though  there  were  small  settlements  at  Pemaquid,  Monhegan 
Island,  Saco,  and  on  the  neck  of  land  where  Portland  now  stands; 
and  in  1677  the  heirs  of  Gorges  sold  out  their  claims  to  Massachusetts 
for  £1250.  The  district  of  Maine  remained  a  part  of  Massachusetts 
throughout  the  colonial  period  and  even  after  the  formation  of  the 
United  States  of  America. 

Usually  in  the  history  of  America,  colonizing  expeditions  into  the 
wilderness  have  resulted  in  wars  with  the  Indians,  the  original  occu 
pants  of  the  soil.     The  year  after  Hooker  and  his  flock    Indian  wars 
journeyed  into  Connecticut  the  Pequot  Indians  rose  up  to 
assert  their  ownership  of  the  land.     A  company  of  eight  hundred  whites, 
with  three  hundred  Indian  allies,  led  by  Captain  John  Mason  and 


54  THE  EUROPEAN  COLONIES 

Captain  John  Underbill,  contrived  to  surprise  them  in  one  of  their 
stockades,  and  only  seven  Pequots  lived  to  make  their  escape.  More 
than  six  hundred  were  butchered  in  cold  blood. 

Forty  years  later  all  New  England  was  involved  in  an  Indian  war, 
known  as  King  Philip's  War,  in  which  the  English  lost  six  hundred  men, 
King  twelve  hundred  houses,  and  thousands  of  cattle,  —  in  all 

Philip's  War.  neariy  a  million  dollars'  worth  of  property;  three  thousand 
Indians  were  killed;  King  Philip  himself,  son  of  their  old  friend  Massa- 
soit,  betrayed  by  one  of  his  own  men,  was  shot  down  by  stealth,  his 
head  and  hands  cut  off,  and  his  body  quartered  and  hung  up  on  four 
trees.  The  NewEnglanders  had  surely  not  learned  the  gospel  of  mercy. 

Although  the  heavy  immigration  into  Massachusetts  exerted  a 
powerful  influence  in  keeping  the  natives  quiet,  constant  vigilance 
The  New  Eng-  on  t^ie  Part  °^  tne  colonists  was  necessary.  In  1643, 
land  Con-  s  under  the  leadership  of  Massachusetts  and  without  the 
sanction  of  the  King,  the  four  New  England  colonies  of 
Plymouth,  Massachusetts  —  which  now  included  New  Hampshire  — 
Connecticut,  and  New  Haven,  united  to  form  the  New  England 
Confederation  for  mutual  defense  against  the  Indians  in  their  midst, 
against  the  French  on  the  north  in  Canada,  and  against  the  Dutch 
on  the  west  in  New  Netherland.  Rhode  Island,  the  despised  refuge 
of  Roger  Williams  and  Mrs.  Hutchinson,  and  Maine,  the  pro 
prietary  colony  of  the  unfriendly  Gorges,  were  excluded  by  the  jeal 
ousy  of  Massachusetts.  The  Confederation  was  the  result  of  the 
same  necessity  of  military  defense  that  later  drove  thirteen  of  the 
British  colonies  together  in  1776.  It  persisted  as  a  unifying  influence 
for  forty  years,  and  proved  an  effective  agency  in  waging  the  struggle 
against  King  Philip.  In  the  conduct  of  the  affairs  of  the  Confedera 
tion  each  colony  had  two  votes,  though  on  several  important  occasions, 
like  that  in  1653,  when  an  attempt  was  made  to  declare  war  on  the 
Dutch  settlers  in  the  Valley  of  the  Hudson,  while  the  English  and  the 
Dutch  were  fighting  one  another  in  Europe,  the  two  votes  of  Massa 
chusetts  outweighed  the  other  six  and  defeated  the  project.  Inasmuch 
as  the  levies  of  men  and  supplies  in  time  of  war  were  apportioned 
among  the  four  colonies  according  to  population,  it  was  not  unreason 
able  for  Massachusetts  to  have  the  controlling  voice. 

In  the  records  of  the  proceedings  of  the  Confederation  for  the  year 
1643  were  recommendations  that  "every  man  may  keep  by  him  a  good 
Proceedings  gunn  &  sword,  one  pound  of  powder  with  foure  pounds 
of  the  Con-  of  shott  with  the  match  or  flints  suitable,"  that  there  be 
lerahon.  Qne  ^^  ^  game  DUSrid  measure  in  all  the  colonies,  that 
military  drill  be  held  six  times  a  year,  that  Massachusetts  in  case  of 


UNDER  THE  EARLY   STUARTS  55 

war  send  one  hundred  and  fifty  men,  Plymouth  thirty,  Connecticut 
thirty,  and  New  Haven  twenty-five,  and  that  a  general  collection  be 
taken  "for  the  mayntenance  of  poore  scholars  at  the  colledg  at  Cam 
bridge."  It  was  ordered  "that  no  person  in  any  of  the  united  colonies 
shall  directly  or  indirectly  sell  to  any  Indians  either  powder,  shott, 
bullets,  guns,  swords,  daggers,  arrowheads,  or  any  ammunition." 

"In  all  history,"  says  one  historian,  speaking  of  early  New  England, 
"  there  has  been  no  other  instance  of  colonization  so  exclusively  effected 
by  picked  and  chosen  men."     The  colonists  themselves    importance 
pointed   to   their   origin   with   pride.     A   New   England    of  New 
colonial  governor  declared,  "God  sifted  a  whole  nation 
that  he  might  send  choice  grain  into  the  wilderness."     Since  from  these 
early  New  Englanders  a  large  portion  of  the  present  population  of 
the  United  States  has  sprung,  and  in  view  of  the  fact  that  they  have 
exercised  a  vast  influence  upon  the  history  of  the  country  in  general, 
their  character  is  of  national  interest. 

One  of  the  finest  things  about  the  Puritans  was  their  devotion  to 
the  cause  of  education.  Hardly  had  they  reared  their  first  homes  in 
the  wilderness,  when  they  started  their  public  schools.  Education 
"It  being  one  of  the  chief  projects  of  Satan  to  keep  men  among  the 
from  the  knowledge  of  the  Scripture,"  ran  an  early  law 
of  Massachusetts,  "to  the  end  that  learning  may  not  be  buried  in  the 
graves  of  our  fathers,  in  church  and  commonwealth,  the  Lord  assisting 
our  endeavors;  it  is  therefore  ordered"  that  every  town  of  fifty  house 
holders  or  more  appoint  one  to  teach  "all  such  children  as  shall  resort 
to  him  to  read  and  write."  A  town  of  one  hundred  families  was  to 
set  up  a  grammar  school  in  which  youths  might  be  "fitted  for  the 
University."  In  1636,  by  order  of  the  legislature,  a  college  was  founded 
in  Newtown  or  Cambridge,  that  "  the  light  of  learning  might  not  go  out, 
nor  the  study  of  God's  word  perish."  This  institution  was  called 
Harvard  College  in  honor  of  the  Reverend  John  Harvard,  who  endowed 
it  with  his  own  library  of  260  volumes  and  a  legacy  of  £700. 

The  New  England  Puritans,  fleeing  from  persecution  for  conscience' 
sake,  were  essentially  religious.  They  exhibited  a  strange  mixture  of 
austere  pietism  and  broadminded  service  to  the  state;  The  religious 
yet  with  all  their  estimable  qualities  and  their  devotion  to  spirit- 
popular  education  and  self-government,  they  showed  traits  of  cruelty 
and  narrowness  that  were  anything  but  admirable.  They  were  cruel 
in  the  extreme  in  their  treatment  of  the  Indians;  and  like  most  of  the 
contemporary  world  they  were  intolerant  toward  those  who  differed 
from  them,  as  was  evidenced  in  their  dealings  with  Roger  Williams  and 
Mrs,  Hutchinson. 


56  THE  EUROPEAN  COLONIES 

The  Quakers  were  victims  of  this  intolerant  spirit.  The  fact  that 
this  inoffensive  sect  was  suffering  in  England  for  non-conformity  to  the 
The  fate  of  laws  concernmg  religion,  just  as  the  English  Puritans 
the  Quakers  themselves  had  suffered,  did  not  deter  Massachusetts  from 
falling  upon  the  Quakers  with  great  severity.  In  an  old 
book  entitled  "A  Declaration  of  the  Sad  and  Great 
Persecution  and  Martyrdom  of  the  .  .  .  Quakers  in  New  England" 
it  is  recorded  that  "twelve  strangers  in  that  country  .  .  .  received 
twenty-three  whippings,  the  most  of  them  with  a  whip  or  three  cords, 
with  knots  at  the  end,"  that  "two  were  beaten  with  pitched  ropes,  the 
blows  amounting  to  an  hundred  and  thirty-nine,"  that  "there  were 
twenty-five  banishments,  upon  the  penalties  of  being  whipt,  or  having 
their  ears  cut,  or  branded  in  the  hand,  if  they  returned,"  that  five  were 
"kept  fifteen  days  (in  all)  without  food,"  that  one  was  "laid  neck  and 
heels  in  Irons  for  sixteen  hours,"  that  one  was  "very  deeply  burnt  in 
the  right  hand  with  the  letter  H,  after  he  had  been  whipt  with  above 
thirty  stripes,"  that  "three  had  their  right  ears  cut  by  the  hangman 
in  the  prison,"  that  an  order  was  made  "that  those  who  had  not  where 
withal  to  answer  the  fines  that  were  laid  upon  them  (for  their  Con 
sciences)  should  be  sold  for  Bond  men  and  Bond  women  to  Barbados, 
Virginia,  or  any  of  the  English  plantations,"  that  eighteen  were  "ban 
ished"  and  "three  of  the  servants  of  the  Lord  were  put  to  death." 

The  sternness  of  the  Puritan  character  found  gruesome  expression 
in  their  cruel  punishment  of  witchcraft.  The  belief  was  general  in 
Witchcraft  those  days  that  certain  individuals  could  bewitch  others, 
that  is,  could  exercise  supernatural  influence  over  them, 
and  in  common  with  the  larger  part  of  Christendom  the  Puritans 
acted  on  the  Biblical  injunction,  "Thou  shalt  not  suffer  a  witch  tc 
live."  Witches  had  already  been  hanged  in  England  and  occasionally 
executions  had  taken  place  in  Massachusetts  for  the  crime  of  witch 
craft,  when  a  strange  outburst  of  the  superstition  occurred  in  Salem 
Village  in  1692.  Young  girls,  readers  of  wierd  tales,  began  to  imagine 
strange  things.  They  fancied  themselves  bewitched  and  accused 
certain  old  women  of  being  witches  and  of  casting  the  evil  spell  over 
them.  The  charges  were  believed,  and  before  the  excitement  abated 
nineteen  victims  were  hanged,  one  was  pressed  to  death,  and  more 
than  a  hundred  were  cast  into  prison  and  cruelly  tortured.  Revulsion 
of  feeling  came  shortly;  men  perceived  their  delusion;  and  the  intensity 
of  repentance  was  as  deep  as  the  original  excitement.  The  Puritan 
extremes,  terrible  as  they  were,  were  generally  to  be  ascribed  to  a 
passion  for  duty. 


UNDER  THE  EARLY  STUARTS 


57 


MARYLAND 

Fourteen  years  after  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  reached  Plymouth,  while 
Massachusetts  was  fast  filling  up  with  Puritans,  and  before  Rhode 
Island  and  Connecticut  were  founded,  three  hundred  Eng-  Thg  Roman 
lishmen,  many  of  them  Roman  Catholics,  under  the  patron-  catholic 
age  of  Cecilius  Calvert,  Lord  Baltimore,  planted  a  colony 
on  the  north  of  Virginia,  which  they  called  Maryland,  in 
honor  of  Henrietta  Maria,  the  queen  of  Charles  I,  a»4- dedicated  as 
ft-re&ige  for  -distressed  Romanists.  The 
refuge  was  sorely  needed,  for  the  laws  of 
England  at  this  time  were  severe  against 
men  and  women  of  this  faith.  The  first 
settlement  in  Maryland  was  called  St. 
Mary's,  and  thither  flocked  hundreds  of 
Catholics  during  the  next  few  years; 
but  while  the  members  of  this  church 
were  given  the  warmest  welcome,  people 
of  other  religions  were  not  excluded  and 
practical  religious  freedom  was  enjoyed 
by  all.  Maryland's  Toleration  Act  of 
1649  formally  guaranteed  freedom  in 
religion  to  all  who  professed  "to  believe 
in  Jesus  Christ."  Although  this  law 
does  not  appear  extremely  liberal  ac 
cording  to  the  standards  of  the  present 
day,  at  that  time  it  was  in  advance  of 
most  of  the  world.  It  was  probably  enacted  for  the  double  purpose  of 
attracting  settlers  of  the  Protestant  faith  and  of  warding  oft  from  the 
colony  attacks  by  the  Puritans,  who  were  then  controlling  England  under 
the  leadership  of  Oliver  Cromwell. 

The  practice  of  "soul  liberty"  in  Rhode  Island  and  the  enactment 
of  the  Toleration  Act  in  Maryland  are  the  first  important  landmarks 
in   the  history  of  the  development  in  America  of   that    Reiigious 
religious  freedom  which  is  the  pride  of  the  United  States    liberty  in 
to-day.     Later,  William  Penn  forwarded  the  movement  in    ' 
Pennsylvania,  and  religious  freedom  to  a  certain  extent  was  permitted  in 
New  Netherland  and  subsequently  in  New  York.     In  the  next  century, 
with  the  assent  of  every  state  in  the  newly  formed  national  govern 
ment,  the  first  amendment  was  written  into  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States,  declaring  that  Congress  "shall  make  no  law  respecting 
an  establishment  of  religion  or  prohibiting  the  free  exercise  thereof." 


SCALE  OF  MILES 


EARLY  VIRGINIA  AND  MARYLAND 


58  THE  EUROPEAN  COLONIES 

Maryland,  like  Maine  under  Gorges,  was  a  proprietary  colony. 
There  were,  as  we  have  seen,  three  kinds  of  colonies,  —  royal,  proprie- 
The  three  tar^'  and  corporate.  In  the  first,  which  was  directly  under 
kinds  of  the  control  of  the  crown,  while  representative  law-making 

was,  as  a  rule,  permitted  to  the  people,  the  King  in  fact 
largely  controlled  even  that  function  of  government,  by  the  exercise 
of  the  veto  power  over  the  acts  of  the  legislature  and  by  virtue  of  his 
appointment  of  the  governor  and  judicial  officials.  On  the  other 
hand,  in  the  proprietary  colonies,  although  these  were  a  part  of  the 
King's  domain,  the  reins  of  government  were  given  over  by  the  King 
to  proprietors  or  groups  of  proprietors  in  a  charter  defining  their 
powers.  The  proprietors  were  allowed  to  choose  the  governors  and 
usually  to  exercise  their  own  pleasure  as  to  whether  or  not  popular 
law-making  bodies  should  be  allowed.  Finally  the  corporate  colonies, 
so  called  because  the  charters  were  given  to  companies  or  corporations, 
were  practically  self-governing,  even  electing  their  own  governors. 

THE  WEST  INDIES 

Stretching  away  to  the  southeast  from  Florida  for  hundreds  of  miles 
lie  some  three  thousand  small  coral  reefs  and  islands,  known  as  the 
The  geog-  Bahama  Islands.  South  of  these  and  in  general  parallel 
raphy  of  the  to  them  lie  the  four  larger  islands  of  Cuba,  Jamaica,  His- 
ies'  paniola  or  Santo  Domingo,  and  Porto  Rico,  and  con 
tinuing  from  these  farther  to  the  southeast,  in  a  great  sweep  that  does 
not  end  until  the  mainland  of  South  America  is  reached,  comes  another 
long  thread  of  small  islands  which  geographers  for  convenience  have 
divided  into  two  groups:  first,  those  nearer  to  Porto  Rico,  called  the 
Leeward  Islands;  and  second,  those  farther  to  the  east  and  exposed  to  the 
winds  and  storms  of  the  Atlantic,  called  the  Windward  Islands.  A  hun 
dred  or  more  miles  to  the  east  of  the  Windward  Islands,  quite  alone  by 
itself,  lies  the  island  of  Barbados.  North  of  all  these  islands  and  seven 
hundred  miles  straight  east  from  Virginia,  are  the  Bermuda  Islands. 

Though  discovered  by  the  Spaniards  soon  after  Columbus,  the 
Bermuda  Islands  remained  uninhabited  and  almost  unknown  till  1609, 
The  various  when  they  were  occupied  by  one  of  the  early  expeditions 
island  on  its  way  to  Virginia;  and  at  once  they  entered  into 

nents'  competition  with  Virginia  for  settlers.  The  English 
arrived  in  the  Leeward  Islands  at  St.  Christopher  or  St.  Kitts  three 
years  after  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  reached  Plymouth  in  New  England,  and 
in  the  next  ten  years  they  succeeded  in  spreading  to  a  number  of  the 
iurrounding  islands,  chief  of  which  were  Nevis,  Montserrat,  Antigua, 
and  St.  Vincent. 


UNDER  THE  EARLY  STUARTS  59 

The  Bahamas  were  discovered  and  then  abandoned  by  the  Spaniards 
in  the  earliest  days  of  American  exploration.     The  first  permanent 
settlement  in  these  islands  was  made  in  1629  by  English    The 
Puritans  fleeing  from  the  persecutions  at  home.  Bahamas. 

Jamaica,  the  largest  of  the  English  West  Indies,  was  taken  from  the 
Spaniards  in  1655,  and  under  its  new  masters  was  immensely  pros 
perous.     Says  one  historian,  "As  easy  a  road  to  riches    jamaica 
as  could  be  found  by  an  Englishman  of  the  Georgian 
epoch  was  to  own  an  estate  in  Jamaica;  and  by  appointing  an  agent 
it  was  not  necessary  for  him  always  to  live  there,  although  there  were 
many  who  loved  the  country  and  made  it  their  home." 

Fertile  Barbados,  twenty-one  miles/long  and  fourteen  miles  wide, 
was  settled  five  years  after  Plymouth.  At  the  end  of  its  first  eleven 
years  it  numbered  six  thousand  inhabitants  and  in  fifty  B 
years  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand,  or  more  than  all 
the  English  colonies  of  the  mainland  at  that  time.  Her  connection 
with  the  mainland  was  intimate,  for  almost  every  vessel,  sailing  between 
England  and  America,  took  the  southern  route  and  called  at  her  port, 
while  on  certain  occasions  she  furnished  hundreds  of  her  citizens  as 
immigrants  to  the  mainland.  Growing  more  rapidly  than  any  other 
British  frontier  settlement,  Barbados  was  universally  recognized  as 
the  most  populous  and  richest  English  colony  in  America  throughout 
the  seventeenth  century.  The  chief  crop  was  sugar.  Says  one  writer 
in  describing  the  island,  "Never  had  the  earth  beheld  such  a  number 
of  planters  collected  in  so  small  a  compass,  or  so  many  rich  productions 
raised  in  so  short  a  time." 

It  is  necessary  to  take  the  West  Indies  into  consideration  in  the  study 
of  the  history  of  the  United  States  in  order  to  escape  the  erroneous  but 
common    impression    that    all    the    important    English   The  place  of 
colonies  in  America  were  situated  on  the  mainland  and  to   *e  West  in- 
gain  an  adequate  comprehension  of  the  interaction  of  the   lish8  colonial" 
different  parts   of   the    English   colonial  empire   on   one   hist0fy- 
another.     In  the  seventeenth  and  early  eighteenth  centuries  England 
regarded  her  rich  and  beautiful  islands  as  her  most  valuable  American 
possessions.     Down  to   1763   there  were  probably   more  commercial 
expeditions  from  England  to  the  West  Indies  than  to  the  near-by 
mainland. 

GENERAL  REFERENCES 

CHANNING,  United  States,  I-II;  OSGOOD,  Colonies  in  the  Seventeenth  Century; 
FISKE,  New  England,  and  Old  Virginia;  E.  EGGLESTON,  The  Beginners  of  a  Nation; 
N.  D.  MERENESS,  Maryland;  WINSOR,  America,  TII-IV,, 


60  THE  EUROPEAN  COLONIES 

SPECIAL  TOPICS 

1.  SIR  FRANCIS  DRAKE.    Epochs,  I,  156-167;  Contemporaries,  I,  81-88;  Original 
Narratives  —  Early  English  and  French  Voyages,  149-174;  WINSOR,  America,  III,  59- 
84;  AVERY,  United  States,  I,  324-327;  Source  Book,  9-11. 

2.  JOHN  SMITH  AND  EARLY  JAMESTOWN;   Old  South  Leaflets,  VII,  167;   Contem 
poraries,  I,  209-217;  Original  Narratives  —  Ear/y  Virginia;    WINSOR,  America,  III, 
127-167;  Epochs,  II,  49-78;    AVERY,  tfmfed  Stefes,  II,  33-80;  Sowrce  £oo&,  11-14, 
33-37- 

3.  THE  PILGRIM  FATHERS.     Old  South  Leaflets,  VII,  153,  and  IV,  142;  Epochs, 
II,86-ioo;  Contemporaries,  1,340-365;  Original  Narratives  —  Bradford's  Plymouth; 
WINSOR,  America,  III,  257-294;  AVERY,  United  States,  II,  103-138;  Source  Book,  39-41. 

4.  ROGER  WILLIAMS.     Epochs,  II,  131-135;  Contemporaries,  I,  402-406;  OSGOOD, 
Colonies  in  the  Seventeenth  Century,  I,  224^236;  AVERY,  United  States,  II,  267-277. 

5.  THE  FOUNDING  OF  CONNECTICUT.     AVERY,  United  States,  II,  303-338;  Source 
Book,  51-52;  FISKE,  New  England,  122-128;  A.  JOHNSTON,  Connecticut. 

6.  EARLY  NEW  HAMPSHIRE  AND  MAINE.    Source  Book,  55-57;  FISKE,  New  England, 
120,  154,  259,  and  275;  H.  S.  BURRAGE,  The  Beginnings  of  Colonial  Maine. 

7.  MANNERS  AND  CUSTOMS  OF  THE  PURITANS.     FISHER,  Men,  Women,  and  Man 
ners,  I,  117-242;  A.  M.  EARLE,  Customs  and  Fashions  in  Old  New  England,  Home  Life 
in  Colonial  Days,  and  The  Sabbath  in  Puritan  New  England;  Contemporaries,  I,  313- 
339,  and  467-516;  SPARKS,  Expansion,  48-68. 

8.  THE  FIRST  THANKSGIVING.     C.  L.  NORTON,  Magazine  of  American  History, 
December,  1885;  MARY  LOWE,  New  England  Magazine,  November,   1904;   R.  M. 
SCHAUFFLER,  Thanksgiving;  W.  D.  LOVE,  The  Fast  and  Thanksgiving  Days  of  New 
England. 

ILLUSTRATIVE  MATERIAL 

NOYES,  Drake;  HENTY,  Under  Drake's  Flag;  TENNYSON,  Raleigh;  KINGSLEY,  West 
ward  Ho;  M.  JOHNSTON,  To  Have  and  To  Hold;  J.  AUSTIN,  Standish  of  Standish,  and 
Betty  Alden;  LONGFELLOW,  Courtship  of  Miles  Standish,  John  Endicott,  and  Giles  Corey; 
HAWTHORNE,  Grandfather's  Chair,  Part  I,  Maypole  of  Merrymount,  Endicott  and  the 
Red  Cross  (in  Twice  Told  Tales},  and  The  Scarlet  Letter;  HOLLAND,  Bay  Path;  WHIT- 
TIER,  Cassandra  Southwick,  John  Under  hill,  The  Exiles,  Banished  from  Massachusetts, 
King's  Missive,  Witch  of  Wenham,  and  Mabel  Martin;  STIMSON,  King  Noanett. 

SUGGESTIVE  QUESTIONS 

In  what  sense  is  it  true  to  say  that  the  defeat  of  the  Spanish  Armada  was  the 
opening  event  in  the  history  of  the  United  States?  Compare  conditions  in  early 
Jamestown  with  those  in  early  Plymouth.  What  was  the  origin  of  representative  gov 
ernment  in  Virginia,  in  Plymouth,  and  in  Massachusetts?  Why  did  the  people  of 
Massachusetts  so  readily  disperse  and  set  up  colonies  in  distant  parts  of  New  England? 
Describe  the  treatment  accorded  to  the  Indians  in  colonial  New  England.  Account 
for  the  devotion  of  New  England  to  popular  education.  What  were  the  Connecticut 
Blue  Laws?  Why  did  not  the  Spaniards  destroy  early  Jamestown?  What  made  the 
difference  in  the  prosperity  of  early  Plymouth  and  early  Massachusetts?  What  were 
Raleigh's  services  to  English  colonization?  What  prominent  explorers  visited  the 
New  England  coasts  before  the  Pilgrims?  Distinguish  the  words  Puritans,  Separatists, 
Pilgrims,  Non-conformists,  and  Dissenters.  What  important  Indian  wars  took  place 
in  colonial  New  England,  and  what  was  the  effect  of  these  wars  on  the  growth  of  the 
"olonies  and  on  their  relations  to  one  another? 


CHAPTER   V 
DUTCH,   SWEDISH,   DANISH,   AND   RUSSIAN  AMERICA 

THE  little  republic  of  Holland  was  not  a  likely  spot  for  the  seat  of  a 
colonial  empire.  Her  home  dominions  were  not  much  larger  than  the 
present  state  of  Rhode  Island,  the  greater  part  of  her  . 

territory  lay  below  the  level  of  the  sea,  and  in  the  year  1609  nings  o  ° 
she  was  emerging  from  a  terrible  struggle  for  liberty 
against  Philip  II  of  Spain.  With  bravery  and  persistence 
she  had  made  her  independence  good,  and  by  fierce  attacks  on  the 
outlying  possessions  of  her  persecutor  had  gained  possession  of  the 
Spice  Islands  of  Asia,  which  Spain  had  then  only  recently  acquired  from 
Portugal. 

The  situation  of  Holland  made  seamen  of  her  people,  her  seamen 
made  her  commerce,  and  her  commerce  was  the  foundation  of  her 

colonial  empire.     After  the  acquisition  of  the  Spice  Islands 

V  rr  j-  The  Dutch 

her  prosperity  grew  apace.     Her  trading  vessels  were  on    in  the  valley 

every  sea.  Through  the  exploration  of  Henry  Hudson  9^ the 
in  1609,  while  he  was  temporarily  in  their  employ,  the 
Dutch  gained  a  foothold  in  the  new  world  in  the  Valley  of  the  Hudson 
River.  The  erection  of  rude  huts  by  Dutch  traders  on  Manhattan 
Island  followed  in  1614,  marking  the  beginning  of  what  is  now  the 
largest  city  on  the  continent,  while  stations  for  trade  with  the  natives 
were  opened  on  the  Delaware,  the  Hudson,  and  the  Connecticut  Rivers, 
and  at  intervening  points.  Albany,  called  Fort  Orange  by  the  Dutch, 
was  one  of  the  chief  centers  of  this  trade.  Thus  in  the  early  years  of 
the  seventeenth  century  the  Dutch,  the  English  under  their  various 
leaders,  and  the  French  under  Champlain,  were  dealing  blows  to  the 
waning  power  of  Spain  in  North  America. 

In  1621  Holland  granted  a  charter  to  the  Dutch  West  India  Com 
pany,  organized  for  purposes  of  trade,  and  authorized  it  to  plant  and 
to  govern  colonies.     The  Company  appointed  as  the  first    New 
governor  of  New  Netherland,  its  colony  along  the  Hudson,    Netherland. 
Peter  Minuit,  who  purchased  the  island  of  Manhattan  from  trie  Indians 
for   twenty-four   dollars'    worth   of   beads   and   ribbons.     Under   his 
despotic  rule  and  that  of  his  successors,  Wouter  Van  T  wilier,  William 

6l 


62 


THE  EUROPEAN  COLONIES 


Kieft,  and  Peter  Stuyvesant,  the  people  had  but  little  share  in  the 
government  of  the  colony. 

Although  situated  in  the  richest  and  most  important  river  valley 
on  the  Atlantic  coast,  New  Netherland  as  a  colony  did  not  prosper. 
Slow  In  fifty  years  it  possessed  hardly  two  thousand  inhabi 

tants,  while  New  Amsterdam,  its  largest   town,  on  the 
finest  harbor  of  the  continent,  numbered  only  eight  hundred.     The 


THE  STADT  HUYS,  FIRST  CITY  HALL  IN  NEW  YORK 
Copyright,  1904,  by  Chas.  Beseler  Co.,  N.  Y. 

Dutch  were  not  attempting  to  build  up  their  frontier  in  the  ordinary 
way.  They  were  not  seeking  new  outposts  where  their  fellow-citizens 
might  come  and  live,  but  were  rather  maintaining  trading  posts  for 
purposes  of  commercial  gain.  A  heterogeneous  collection  of  people 
was  called  together  by  the  trading  facilities  of  the  colony;  in  1643 
eighteen  different  languages  were  spoken  among  the  four  hundred 
inhabitants  of  New  Amsterdam  alone.  A  slight  attempt  at  agriculture 
was  made  in  the  patroon  system,  whereby  lords  or  "patroons"  were 
granted  thousands  of  acres  along  the  Hudson  in  return  for  bringing  to 
the  country  a  certain  number  of  settlers.  These  settlers  were  not 
allowed  to  own  their  own  farms,  but  were  obliged  to  pay  rent  to  the 
lords  over  them,  as  well  as  to  render  to  them  other  payments  and  serv 
ices. 


DUTCH,  SWEDISH,   DANISH,  AND  RUSSIAN  AMERICA       63 


8  "I 


s  ? 

C/3      - 


64 


THE  EUROPEAN  COLONIES 


New  Netherland  might  have  been  expected  to  enjoy  religious  liberty, 
which  was  the  finest  fruit  of  the  long  struggle  of  Holland  with  Spain  for 
Religious  lib-  independence.  As  early  as  1587,  by  declaring  that  they 
erty  among  would  "respect  the  difference  in  religious  opinions,"  would 
settles*.011  leave  a11  churches  to  be  free  and  would  "compell  no 
man's  conscience,"  the  Estates  General,  the  national  legis 
lature  of  Holland,  made  that  country  one  of  the  first  of  modern  states 

to  espouse  the  cause 
of  religious  tolera 
tion.  On  this  side  of 
the  Atlantic,  how 
ever,  the  despotic 
Governor  Stuyve- 
sant  sought  to  pro 
hibit  all  religious 
services  in  his  colony 
save  those  of  his  own 
Dutch  Reformed 
Church.  The  cos 
mopolitan  gathering 
of  colonists  under 
him  would  not  toler 
ate  such  procedure, 
and  they  insisted 
upon  and  secured  a 
fair  degree  of  relig 
ious  toleration. 

It  has  been  said 
of   the   Dutch    that 
they  were   "  in  per- 
PETER  STUYVESANT  petual  alliance  with 

ready   money,  be  it 

English,  French,  or  Spanish";  in  other  words,  that  they  went  every- 
The  Dutch  where  seeking  trade.  As  soon  as  the  English  and  the 
in  the  West  French  established  their  rich  and  prosperous  settlements 
in  the  West  Indies,  the  ever-selling  Dutch  appeared  in 
their  midst  to  dispose  of  their  wares.  They  took  into  their  possession 
three  small  unoccupied  islands  on  the  edge  of  the  Leeward  Islands  to 
serve  as  a  center  of  their  operations.  Chief  of  these  was  St.  Eustatius, 
a  small  island  the  one  long  street  of  which  was  filled  with  commodities 
from  every  quarter  of  the  globe;  and  hither  the  neighboring  English 
and  French  planters  resorted  for  trade,  in  full  confidence  that  they 


DUTCH,  SWEDISH,   DANISH,  AND   RUSSIAN  AMERICA      65 

could  devote  their  entire  energies  to  the  cultivation  of  sugar  and 
tobacco  and  depend  upon  the  Dutch .  to  'furnish  them  with  needed 
supplies. 

The  little  power  of  Sweden  secured  a  foothold  in  America  in  what 
is  now  the  state  of  Delaware  along  the  bay  and  river  of  that  name. 
In  face  of  the  Spanish,  French,  English,  and  Dutch  claims  New 
to  the  same  region,  she  founded  there  New  Sweden  in  1638,  Sweden- 
sent  over  colonists,  and  established  a  few  settlements;  but  in  fifteen 
years  New  Sweden  had  succeeded  in  attaining  a  population  of  less 
than  one  thousand  inhabitants.  Because  of  the  distinguished  part 
played  by  the  Swedes  on  the  Protestant  side  of  the  Thirty  Years' 
War  in  Germany,  there  was  little  disposition  on  the  part  of  the  English 
and  the  Dutch  to  disturb  the  Swedish-American  settlements  until  after 
the  conclusion  of  that  war  in  1648. 

In  1655,  however,  the  Swedes  were  forced  to  yield  their  position, 
which  they  had  held  for  seventeen  years,  to  the  superior  power  of  the 
Dutch  under  Governor  Stuyvestant,  who  coveted  the  Dutch  con. 
trading  facilities  of  the  Delaware.  The  Swedes  were  quest  of  New 
allowed  to  retain  their  farms  and  possessions,  but  sover 
eignty  passed  to  the  Dutch,  whose  American  possessions  on  the 
mainland  now  embraced  the  present  states  of  Delaware,  New  Jersey, 
New  York,  and  the  western  part  of  Connecticut.  The  very  existence 
of  New  Netherland,  well  situated  in  itself  and  sandwiched  in  between 
the  English  on  the  north  and  on  the  south,  was  a  menace  to  the  English 
colonies,  a  challenge  which  it  did  not  take  England  long  to  accept. 

Not  to  be  left  out  in  the  game  of  slicing  up  the  new  world,  Denmark, 
then  in  union  with  Norway,  took  into  her  possession  the  uninhabited 
island  of  St.  Thomas,  the  westernmost  of  the  Leeward  Danish 
Islands,  only  a  few  miles  from  Porto  Rico.  The  island  was  America. 
small  and  its  soil  not  very  fertile,  but  it  possessed  an  excellent  harbor, 
in  which  fifty  ships  could  easily  ride  at  anchor.  Later  the  Danes 
acquired  the  near-by  islands  of  St.  John  and  Santa  Cruz,  and  to 
day  they  still  hold  the  three  islands.  Greenland,  discovered  by  Leif 
Ericson  as  early  as  1000  A.D.,  was  at  first  a  free  country,  then  a 
province  of  Norway  till  1814,  since  which  time  it  has  belonged  to 
Denmark. 

By  the  discoveries  of  Vitus  Bering  in  the  eighteenth  century,  R.US- 
sia  also  came  into  possession  of  a  vast  holding  in  America,  —  Alaska,  — 
but  so  worthless  did  this  northern  province  seem  during    Russian 
the  time  when  the  nations  were  disputing  one  another's    Amenca- 
claims  in  the  new  world,  that  she  had  no  difficulty  in  defending  her 
possession. 


66  THE  EUROPEAN  COLONIES 

GENERAL  REFERENCES 

FISKE,  Dutch  and  Quaker  Colonies;  CHANNING,  United  States,  I;  OSGOOD,  Colonies 
in  the  Seventeenth  Century;  E.  B.  O'CALLAGHAN,  New  Nelherland;  J.  T.  SCHARF,  Dela 
ware;  AMANDUS  JOHNSON,  Swedish  Settlements. 

SPECIAL  TOPICS 

1.  NEW  NETHERLAND.    Old  South  Leaflets,  III,  69,  IV,  94,  and  VII,  168;  Epochs,  II, 
101-114;  Contemporaries,  I,  529-536;  Original  Narratives  —  New  Netherland;  WINSOR, 
America,  IV,  395-442;  J.  H.  INNIS,  New  Amsterdam;  E.  SINGLETON,  Dutch  New  York; 
S.  VAN  RENSSELAER,  New  York  in  the  Seventeenth  Century;  AVERY,  United  States,  II, 
80-93,  and  218-255;  Source  Book,  42-44,  and  85-88. 

2.  PETER  STUYVESANT.     FISKE,  Dutch  and  Quaker  Colonies,  I,  198-201,  and  292- 
294. 

3.  THE  PATROON  SYSTEM.     FISKE,  Dutch  and  Quaker  Colonies,  I,  134-140. 

4.  NEW  SWEDEN.     AVERY,  United  States,  II,  255-267. 

5.  THE  VOYAGES  or  HENRY  HUDSON.     FISKE,  Dutch  and  Quaker  Colonies,  I, 
80-95. 

ILLUSTRATIVE  MATERIAL 

IRVING,  Knickerbocker's  History  of  New -York;  STEDMAN,  Peter  Stuyvesant's  Call. 

SUGGESTIVE  QUESTIONS 

What  explorers  visited  the  Hudson  River  before  Henry  Hudson?  Describe  early 
Dutch  houses,  dress,  and  customs.  Explain  the  slow  growth  of  New  Netherland. 


CHAPTER   VI 

ENGLISH  AMERICA.    INFLUENCE  OF  THE  UPRISING  OF 
THE  ENGLISH   PURITANS,    1642-1660 

THE  " thorough"  policy  of  King  Charles  of  England  and  his  minis 
ters  Wentworth  and  Laud,  which  had  been  the  means  of  sending  thou 
sands  of  their  Puritan  opponents  to  New  England,  finally  The  Puritan  * 
threw  England  herself  into  civil  war.  Parliament  met  Revolution 
in  1640  for  the  first  time  in  eleven  years  and  soon  got 
beyond  the  King's  control.  It  brought  about  the  arrest  of  Wentworth 
and  Laud,  released  their  many  Puritan  victims  from  prison,  and  put 
an  end  to  the  King's  despotism,  notably  to  his  unlawful  use  of  the 
taxing  power.  Despite  this  warning  the  King  proved  even  more 
obstinate  and  arbitrary  than  in  1629,  and  hastened  the  gathering  storm 
by  entering  the  House  of  Commons  in  person  and  attempting  the 
arrest  of  five  of  the  members.  He  failed  in  his  purpose,  and  his  act 
served  but  to  increase  the  bitterness  against  him.  A  struggle  between 
the  King  and  Parliament  followed,  and  battles  were  fought  between 
the  Royalists  or  Cavaliers  on  the  one  side  and  the  Parliamentarians 
or  Roundheads  on  the  other,  which  resulted  in  1645  in  a  victory  for 
the  latter.  A  second  civil  war  ending  in  the  same  way,  Parliament 
instituted  proceedings  against  the  King,  and  in  January  1649  he  was 
condemned  to  death  for  his  "tyrannical  and  arbitrary  government." 

The  extreme  radicals  then  proclaimed  a  republic  or  commonwealth; 
and  under  the  only  written  constitution  that  England    The  Puritan 

has  ever  had,  Cromwell,  the  hero  of  the  war,  was  made    ConMnon~J 

.  wealth,  under 

protector  for  life,  a  King  in  all  but  name.     His  rule  was    Oliver 
vigorous  and  on  the  whole  successful.  Cromwell. 

Under  the  new  order  of  things  in  England,  the  character  of  the 
emigration  to  America  completely  changed.     Not  only  did  the  Puri 
tans,  relieved  from  persecution,  stop  seeking  wilderness    , 
,  ,  The  change 

homes  across  the  Atlantic,  but  many  of  their  brethren,    in  emigra- 

who  had  come  to  America  under  King  Charles's  arbitrary    America 
rule,   returned   to   the   mother   country  to   take  up  the 
struggle  against  the  royal  power.     Sir  Harry  Vane,  governor  of  Massa 
chusetts  in  1636,  fought  under  Cromwell  as  one  of  his  chief  lieutenants. 

67 


68  THE  EUROPEAN  COLONIES 

There  was,  on  the  other  hand,  an  exodus  of  Royalists  to  Virginia. 
During  the  continuation  of  the  Puritan  supremacy,  the  population  of 
Virginia  increased  from  16,000  to  33,000.  Among  the  newcomers  were 
the  ancestors  of  George  Washington,  James  Madison,  James  Monroe, 
and  of  many  of  the  other  families  later  prominent  in  Virginian  history. 
Another  influence  in  America  of  the  uprising  of  the  English  Puritans 
was  the  check  placed  on  the  efforts  of  the  King  to  destroy  the  liberties 
Preservation  °f  New  England.  Sir  Ferdinando  Gorges,  firm  supporter 
emmeirthi  °f  Charles  *»  lo>"al  memoer  of  tne  Church  of  England, 
Massachu-  member  of  the  Council  for  New  England,  and  Proprietor 
setts.  Of  Maine,  had  ambitions  before  the  Civil  War  in  Eng 

land  to  become  proprietor  of  all  New  England.  Plymouth,  Rhode 
Island,  Connecticut,  and  New  Haven  had  no  charters;  only  that  of 
Massachusetts  needed  to  be  overthrown.  Under  the  proposed  regime, 
if  it  had  been  established,  the  popular  liberties  of  the  New  Englanders 
would  have  been  endangered.  With  the  support  of  the  King  and  of 
Laud,  it  seemed  at  one  time  as  if  Gorges's  ambition  would  be  realized, 
but  the  gathering  clouds  of  civil  war  diverted  the  royal  attention  to 
affairs  at  home,  and  the  attack  on  the  liberties  of  New  England  came 
to  nothing.  In  this  security  of  her  charter  as  a  result  of  the  Puritan 
uprising  in  England,  Massachusetts  was  more  than  compensated  for 
the  cessation  of  emigration  to  her  shores. 
Puritan  Virginia,  Maryland,  Bermuda,  and  Barbados,  alone 

attacks  on         of  ^he  American  colonies,  were  suspected  of  disloyalty 
the  colonies  *T  , 

loyal  to  the       to  the  rule  of  Cromwell,  and  were  iorced  to  surrender, 

King'  though  on  fair  and  easy  terms,  to  expeditions  sent  against 

them  and  to  swear  allegiance  to  the  Commonwealth. 

GENERAL  REFERENCES 

CHANNING,  United  Stales,  I;  OSGOOD,  Colonies  in  the  Seventeenth  Century,  II,  54- 
71,  and  105-142. 

SPECIAL  TOPICS 

1.  THE  ENGLISH  CAPTURE  or  JAMAICA.     C.  H.  HARING,  Buccaneers,  85-112. 

2.  SIR  HARRY  VANE.     OSGOOD,  American  Colonies  in  the  Seventeenth  Century,  I, 
236-246. 

3.  SIR  FERDINANDO  GORGES.     OSGOOD,  Colonies  in  the  Seventeenth  Century,  III, 
186-192,  and  320-323. 

SUGGESTIVE  QUESTIONS 

Carefully  explain  the  movement  of  population  between  England  and  America, 
1640-1660.  What  were  the  effects  in  America  of  the  changes  in  the  English  Govern 
ment,  1640-1660?  Compare  the  influence  of  political  conditions  in  England  from  1620 
to  1640  on  Puritan  settlement  in  America,  with  the  influence  of  political  conditions 
from  1640  to  1660  on  this  movement. 


CHAPTER  vn 

ENGLISH  AMERICA  UNDER  THE  LATER  STUART  KINGS, 

1660-1688 

FRICTION   IN   THE    COLONIES 

THE  Puritan  Republic  in  England  did  not  long  survive  Cromwell's 
death  in  1658,  for  in  another  year  his  incompetent  son  Richard,  who 
had  succeeded  him,  was  forced  to  resign,  and  the  experi-  The  resto- 
ment  of  the  Commonwealth  was  at  an  end.  In  1660,  gjjjjj!^^ 
with  the  hearty  approbation  of  the  English  people,  the  to'theEng?8 
deposed  Stuart  line  of  kings  was  restored  in  the  person  Ush  throne- 
of  Charles  II,  son  of  the  beheaded  Charles  I.  Just  what  was  restored 
and  what  was  not  restored  in  England  at  this  time  is  an  interesting 
question.  In  general  it  may  be  said  that  the  new  King  lacked  many 
of  the  powers  enjoyed  by  his  father  before  1640,  and  that  Parliament 
retained  the  advantage  which  it  had  won.  The  Commonwealth  was 
thoroughly  discredited,  and  Cromwell's  body  was  dug  up  from  its 
grave  in  Westminster  Abbey  to  be  hanged  in  chains  at  Tyburn,  where 
felons  were  executed. 

In  America  the  first  colony  to  feel  the  effects  of  the  new  order  was 
the  Puritan  Commonwealth  of  Massachusetts,  which  had  enjoyed  a 
respite  from   the  interference   of   the   Stuart   Kings   for          . 
twenty  years.     In  the  exercise  of  their  liberty  the  men    pendent  atti- 
of    Massachusetts    had    grown   careless    of    the    mother    tud® of  J1*8" 

0  sacnusetts. 

country's  authority.  They  failed  to  apprehend  the  regi 
cides,  Whalley  and  Goffe,  who  as  judges  had  voted  in  1649  for  the 
execution  of  Charles  I  and  were  known  to  be  hiding  in  the  colony; 
they  refused  to  tolerate  the  Church  of  England  in  their  midst,  and  for 
a  long  time  refused  a  member  of  this  church  the  right  to  vote.  They 
persistently  broke  the  English  laws  of  trade,  and  in  1661  issued  a 
Declaration  of  Rights  against  what  they  deemed  to  be  the  legislative 
encroachments  of  England.  They  even  substituted  for  the  English 
oath  of  allegiance  a  new  oath  of  allegiance  to  Massachusetts  alone. 

In  resentment  of  this  attitude  the  King  in  1662  and  1663  granted 
liberal  charters  to  Connecticut  and  Rhode  Island  respectively,  that 

69 


yo  THE  EUROPEAN  COLONIES 

he  might  foster  formidable  rivals  to  the  Massachusetts  colony.  Con 
necticut  was  enlarged  to  include  the  colony  of  New  Haven  and  was 
The  punish-  extended  on  the  west  to  the  South  Sea.  Both  Connecti- 
ment  of  Mas-  cut  and  Rhode  Island  were  constituted  corporate  colonies, 
with  powers  almost  equal  to  those  of  independent  repub 
lics.  War  with  Holland  interrupted  the  King's  design  of  adminis 
tering  further  punishment  to  Massachusetts,  but  in  1676  he  sent  an 
investigator,  Edward  Randolph,  to  Boston,  whose  reports  were  de 
cidedly  unfavorable  to  the  colony.  In  1679  she  was  deprived  of  New 
Hampshire,  which  was  made  a  separate  royal  colony,  and  in  1684 
her  own  charter  was  rescinded  by  an  English  court  and  she  herself 
became  a  royal  colony. 

Another  influence  of  the  English  Restoration  of  1660  was  manifest 
in  the  increasing  tyranny  of  Governor  Berkeley  in  Virginia.     Origi 
nally    appointed    as    Governor    by    Charles    I    in    164.2, 
Royalists  in  rT,  IT-  -,         ^ 

Virginia.  temporarily    deposed    during    the     Commonwealth    and 

reb°ellioSn  reappointed  by  Charles  II,   this  sturdy  Royalist  ruled 

Virginia  till  1677.  His  methods  were  arbitrary  in  the 
extreme.  He  kept  the  same  House  of  Burgesses  in  office  for  fifteen 
years  without  reelection,  and  he  gave  assent  to  laws  which  it  passed 
imposing  heavy  taxes.  Because  of  his  private  interest  in  the  fur 
trade  he  refused  to  call  out  the  militia  against  the  Indians,  when  the 
latter  took  the  warpath  in  the  remote  western  settlements.  This  was 
more  than  the  settlers  could  endure.  Their  only  recourse  was  to  take 
up  arms  for  their  own  protection  without  the  sanction  of  the  governor. 
This  they  did  under  the  leadership  of  Nathaniel  Bacon  and  saved 
their  settlements  from  extinction  at  the  hands  of  .the  savages.  In  the 
struggle  that  followed  between  the  governor  and  the  followers  of  Bacon, 
Jamestown  was  burned,  Bacon  died,  and  in  the  end  the  governor  was 
triumphant.  Referring  to  the  severe  cruelty  with  which  Berkeley  put 
down  the  rebellion,  King  Charles  declared,  "That  old  fool  has  taken 
away  more  lives  in  that  naked  country  than  I  did  here  for  the  murder 
of  my  father."  The  lesson  of  the  rebellion  was  that  the  frontiersmen 
of  America  loved  liberty  and  fair  play,  and  that  when  denied  these 
by  their  rulers  they  would  take  measures  to  secure  them  for  themselves. 
In  many  respects  the  Cavalier  Englishmen  of  Virginia  differed 
widely  from  the  Puritan  Englishmen  of  Massachusetts.  A  marked 
Education  in  difference  was  evident  in  the  slight  regard  in  which  popular 
royalist  education  was  held  in  the  southern  colony.  As  late  as 

Virginia.  ^^  Qovernor  Berkeley  wrote,  "I  thank  God  there  are 

no  free  schools  nor  printing  presses,  and  I  hope  we  shall  not  have 
these  hundred  years;  learning  has  brought  disobedience  and  heresy 


ENGLISH  AMERICA  UNDER  THE  LATER  STUARTS        71 

into  the  world  and  printing  has  divulged  them  and  libels  against  the 
best  government.     God  keeps  us  from  both." 

NEW  LAWS  OF  TRADE 

With  the  Restoration,  new  leaders  and  new  commercial  interests 
came  to  the  front  in  England.  The  old  religious  and  political  ques 
tions,  which  had  caused  so  many  to  emigrate  to  America 
in  the  first  part  of  the  century,  although  not  yet  entirely  mercial  in- 
settled,  were  in  part  succeeded  by  new  issues,  chief 
among  which  were  matters  of  trade.  In  Cromwell's  time 
an  ordinance  had  been  passed  which  attempted  to  reserve  the  colonial 
trade  to  England  alone,  but  in  spite  of  the  law  the  Dutch  ships  did 
not  cease  their  trade  with  the  English  colonies.  Three  new  acts  on 
the  subject,  known  as  Navigation  Laws,  were  passed  soon  after  1660. 
According  to  these  laws,  the  leading  American  products,  such  as 
tobacco,  sugar,  cotton,  indigo,  rice,  and  furs,  known  as  "enumerated 
commodities,"  might  be  sold  only  in  England,  and  must  be  carried  to 
this  restricted  market  in  ships  owned  by  English  subjects  and  manned 
by  crews,  three-fourths  of  whom  were  English  subjects.  The  Ameri 
cans  were  allowed  to  make  their  purchases,  with  few  exceptions,  only  in 
England.  It  was  the  violation  of  these  laws  that  constituted  Massa 
chusetts'  chief  offense,  reported  Edward  Randolph,  when  he  investi 
gated  the  conduct  of  that  colony  for  King  Charles  II. 

In  making  the  new  trade  regulations  England  acted  upon  the 
theory  that  the  good  of  the  colonies  should  be  subordinate  to  the  wel 
fare  of  the  mother  country.  It  was  the  expectation  that  The  under- 

under  them  more  gold  would  flow  into  England  in  pay-    Was  prin- 

P  V .  .  11  ciples  of  the 

ment   tor    commodities    than  would    go    out,   and  that    new  laws  of 

thereby   England  would   be   enriched.     The   harsh   and    trade- 
inequitable  working  of  these  laws  in  the  colonies,  as  time  went  on, 
ultimately  called  forth  bitter  resentment  on  the  part  of  the  Americans. 

CONQUEST   OF   THE    RIVAL   TRADING   POSTS    OF   THE    DUTCH 

In  the  enforcement  of  the  laws  of  trade  the  English  were  obliged  to  be 
on  the  constant  lookout  against  the  Dutch  smugglers.     Planted  down 
in  the  Valley  of  the  Hudson,  between  New  England  and  the 
southern  colonies,  the  traders  of  New  Netherland  were  in    conquest  of 
the  very  best  of  situations  to  assist  the  English  colonists    Jjjf  Nethef- 
in  evading  the  restrictions  on  their  trade.     Charles  II 
determined  on  vigorous  measures.     Nine  years  after  the  Dutch  had 
annexed  the  Swedes,  an  English  fleet  suddenly  swooped  down  on  New 


72  THE  EUROPEAN  COLONIES 

Amsterdam  and  annexed  them  all,  Dutch  and  Swedes  alike,  to  England, 
though  Holland  and  England  were  nominally  at  peace.  No  resistance 
was  offered  and  a  majority  of  the  settlers  probably  hailed  with  delight 
their  deliverance  from  the  tyranny  of  the  Dutch  trading  company. 

New  Netherland  now  became  New  York,  a  proprietary  colony, 
under  the  King's  brother,  the  Duke  of  York,  as  proprietor.  By  his 
New  Nether-  own  edict  the  Duke  made  a  code  of  laws  for  his  colony 
New  Ywk"168  known  as  the  "Duke's  Laws,"  and  unwisely  refrained 
for  a  long  time  from  granting  to  his  people  a  share  in  the 
government.  Only  in  1683  did  he  yield  to  the  demand  for  a  popular 
law-making  body.  Later,  as  James  II,  he  repented  of  this  action 
and  ruthlessly  deprived  the  legislature  of  the  powers  which  he  had 
bestowed. 

The  Duke  of  York  as  proprietor  regranted  what  is  now  New  Jersey 
to  two  of  his  friends  at  court,  Lord  Berkeley  and  Sir  George  Carteret, 
New  Jersey.  wno  in  turn  granted  to  the  people  under  them  a  legisla 
tive  assembly  and  other  privileges.  Dissensions  early  dis 
turbed  the  colony  of  New  Jersey,  and  the  two  proprietors  were  glad  to 
sell  out  their  claims  to  a  larger  group  of  proprietors,  prominent  among 
whom  was  the  great  English  Quaker,  William  Penn.  It  was  while 
he  was  interested  in  New  Jersey  that  Penn  conceived  of  the  "holy 
experiment"  which  was  to  result  in  Pennsylvania.  Though  New 
Jersey  was  soon  largely  settled  by  Quakers  and  under  control  of  this 
peaceful  sect,  the  colony  had  a  history  which  was  far  from  peaceful. 
Divided  into  East  Jersey  and  West  Jersey,  it  was  harassed  at  times 
from  one  end  to  the  other  by  quarrels  over  the  respective  rights  of 
legislature,  proprietor,  and  King. 

THE  NEW   COLONY  OF   CAROLINA  AND   OTHER   TRADING 
ENTERPRISES 

The  growing  commercial  spirit  of  England  after  1660  lent  itself  to 
the  founding  of  more  colonies.  Headed  by  Anthony  Ashley  Cooper, 
The  founding  afterwards  the  Earl  of  Shaftesbury,  one  of  the  leading 
of  Carolina.  friends  of  colonial  America,  eight  courtiers  of  the  King 
were  constituted  joint  proprietors  of  the  new  trading  colony  of  Caro 
lina,  south  of  Virginia.  Before  the  grant  was  made,  settlements  had 
already  been  started  by  Virginians  on  Albemarle  Sound  in  1653,  as 
military  outposts  against  the  Spaniards  in  Florida.  After  the  grant 
was  made  and  colonists  had  come  from  England,  recruits  arrived  from 
New  England  and  even  from  Barbados.  A  settlement  was  made  in 
1670  in  the  southern  part  of  the  colony  on  the  Ashley  and  Cooper 
Rivers,  which  despite  some  failures  slowly  developed  into  the  town  of 


ENGLISH  AMERICA  UNDER  THE  LATER  STUARTS         73 

Charleston.  Large  numbers  of  Huguenots  found  a  refuge  in  Carolina 
from  persecutions  in  France,  and  Scotch  Highlanders  also  sought  the 
colony. 

At  the  outset  a  serious  mistake  was  made  in  the  form  of  government 
granted  to  the  Carolina  settlers  by  the  proprietors.  Flying  in  the  face 
of  the  excellent  example  set  by  Lord  Baltimore  in  Mary-  An  unwise 
land,  who  rendered  his  colony  happy,  prosperous,  and  constitution, 
attractive  to  settlers  by  granting  to  them  a  fair  degree  of  self-govern 
ment,  the  eight  Carolina  proprietors  attempted  to  set  up  an  unusual 
form  of  government  after  the  manner  of  the  feudal  system  of  mediaeval 
Europe.  The  constitution  for  this  was  called  the  Grand  Model,  and 
was  drawn  up  for  them  by  the  philosopher,  John  Locke.  By  this 
plan,  the  lords,  whom  the  proprietors  had  the  right  to  create  under  the 
name  of  landgraves  and  cazijques,  were  to  own  the  land  and  govern  it 
arbitrarily,  without  the  cooperation  of  the  common  people.  The 
latter,  known  as  leetmen,  deprived  of  any  share  in  the  government, 
were  at  the  bottom  of  the  social  scale,  attached  to  the  soil  and  under 
the  jurisdiction  of  a  lord  of  the  manor  above  them.  It  was  provided 
that  "all  the  children  of  leetmen  shall  be  leetmen,  and  so  to  all  gener 
ations."  Instead  of  owning  the  land  in  their  own  name,  the  leetmen 
were  to  pay  rent  for  it  to  their  lords,  and  perform  for  the  latter  many 
menial  duties  and  pay  objectionable  fees. 

The  plan  would  not  work.  Hardy  pioneers,  subduing  the  wilderness 
by  the  sweat  of  the  brow,  are  not  men  to  brook  interference  from 
despotic  superiors;  they  come  to  love  their  own  way  of  Reasons  for 
doing  things,  and  in  democratic  fashion  to  count  them-  lts  failure- 
selves  the  equal  of  any  people  on  earth.  Just  as  the  Pilgrim  Fathers 
at  Plymouth,  Roger  Williams  and  his  followers  at  Providence, 
Thomas  Hooker  and  his  band  at  Hartford,  and  John  Davenport  and 
his  company  at  New  Haven  set  up  their  own  government  in  the  wilder 
ness  without  direction  or  authority  from  the  King,  and  maintained 
their  right  to  govern  themselves,  so  the  frontiersmen  of  Carolina 
exhibited  the  same  desire  for  freedom;  and  they,  too,  gained  their  end. 
The  proprietors  abandoned  the  Grand  Model,  and  granted  their  colo 
nists  a  share  in  the  government. 

In  1729  the  northern  settlements  around  Albemarle  Sound  and  those 
farther  south  around  Charleston  were  separated  into  the.    The  division 
two  royal  colonies  of  North  Carolina  and  South  Carolina.    of  the  colonv- 

In  South  Carolina  a  crop  was  found,  which  in  that  region  was  even 
more  profitable  than  sugar  and  tobacco;  this  was  rice,  at  first  the  native 
rice  of  the  Indians  and  later  a  better  variety  introduced  from  Mada 
gascar.  Rice  thrives  best  in  low  swamps  and  marshes,  where  malarial 


74  THE  EUROPEAN  COLONIES 

fever  is  extremely  destructive  to  human  life,  and  blacks  were  found 
Slavery  in  better  fitted  to  combat  this  hardship  than  were  the  whites. 
South  Thus  rice,  as  the  leading  product  of  the  region,  fastened 

negro  slavery  on  the  colony.  The  same  conditions  pre 
vailed,  though  to  a  less  degree,  in  the  cultivation  of  indigo,  the  other 
leading  product  of  South  Carolina.  Very  soon  the  blacks  outnumbered 
the  whites;  they  were  cheap,  they  could  be  worked  hard  as  long  as 
they  lived,  and  when  they  died  could  easily  be  replaced  by  fresh  im 
portations  from  Africa.  To  South  Carolina  African  slaves  seemed 
an  economic  necessity. 

Cooper  formed  another  company,  which  received  a  grant  of  the 
Bahama  Islands  as  a  proprietary  colony.  Settlement  began  in  the 
The  Bahama  hope  of  making  Carolina  and  the  Bahamas  joint  centers 
Islands.  of  trade,  but  for  a  long  time  the  Bahamas  were  little 

more  than  nests  of  pirates;  progress  was  slow;  and  with  a  poor  system 
of  government,  the  colony  was  one  of  the  most  backward  of  the  West 
Indies. 

Under  the  same  commercial  stimulus,  the  Hudson  Bay  Company 
was  organized  in  1670  as  a  competitor  of  the  French  for  the  rich  fur 
The  Hudson  trade  of  the  interior  of  the  continent  in  the  north.  The 
Bay  King  granted  to  his  cousin,  Prince  Rupert,  and  to  certain 

other  noblemen,  "the  sole  trade  and  commerce  of  all 
those  seas,  creeks,  and  sounds  lying  within  the  entrance  of  Hudson's 
Straits,  with  all  the  lands,  countries,  territories  upon  the  coasts  and 
confines"  of  the  same.  The  Company  did  not  organize  a  colony,  but 
set  up  trading  stations  and  turned  the  territory  into  a  vast  preserve 
for  fur-bearing  animals. 

PENNSYLVANIA 

In  the  foundation  of  the  Quaker  refuge  of  Pennsylvania,  which 
was  the  most  successful  of  the  colonies  set  up  in  the  later  Stuart  period, 
The  new  commercial  considerations  were  secondary  to  the  desire 
sect  of  the  of  a  small  religious  sect  in  England  to  escape  oppression. 
Quakers.  In  thg  early  part  of  the  reign  of  charles  jj^  Parliament 

passed  a  series  of  laws  to  govern  the  religious  situation,  designed 
especially  to  secure  uniformity  of  worship.  These  laws  were  but  mildly 
enforced  against  other  dissenters,  but  against  the  Quakers  their  enforce 
ment  was  severe.  The  members  of  this  new  sect,  founded  shortly  after 
1640  by  a  young  Englishman  named  George  Fox,  were  thrown  into 
prison  by  hundreds.  They  did  not  believe  in  an  organized  church,  in 
bishops,  church  councils,  an  educated  ministry,  sermons  and  church 
music,  but  rather  in  the  "inner  light,"  which  they  believed  came  to  all 


ENGLISH  AMERICA  UNDER  THE  LATER  STUARTS        75 

men  alike  and  rendered  the  ordinary  church  services  superfluous.  If 
the  spirit  spoke  to  all,  all  were  equal;  hence  the  members  of  the  sect 
were  ardent  democrats,  bitter  opponents  of  the  divine  right  of  Kings. 
They  would  not  take  off  their  hats  to  persons  in  authority,  lest  by  this 
act  they  might  seem  to  recognize  superiority  in  the  one  saluted,  and 
their  simple  form  of  address,  "thee"  and  "thou,"  was  intended  to 
indicate  the  same  belief  in  the  equality  of  all.  They  opposed  war 
and  taxes  for  its  support.  They  were  out  of  harmony,  therefore,  not 
only  with  established  religion  but  with  established  civil  government  as 
well.  The  new  religion  took  a  strong  hold  on  its  followers,  who  be 
came  noted  for  the  simplicity  and  the  sweetness  of  their  faith  and  for 
the  enthusiasm  and  courage  with  which  they  endured  persecution. 

Rhode  Island  and  Maryland,  with  their  religious  toleration,  opened 
their  doors  to  the  persecuted  sect,  and  New  Jersey  likewise  furnished 
them  a  refuge.  Then  by  the  generosity  of  the  young  William 
English  Quaker,  William  Penn,  the  colony  of  Penn-  Penn- 
sylvania  was  staked  out  for  them.  The  conversion  of  the  rich  and 
socially  prominent  Penn  to  Quakerism  was  an  important  event  in  the 
history  of  the  new  religion.  He  was  persecuted  like  the  rest  of  the 
sect,  was  expelled  from  Oxford  University,  and  sent  by  his  disgusted 
parents  to  the  continent  of  Europe,  that  he  might  lose  his  serious  pur 
poses  in  the  gaieties  of  life;  but  he  stood  firm.  Charles  II  owed  Penn's 
father  £16,000  and  after  the  latter's  death  he  paid  the  debt  to-  the 
son  by  a  grant  of  forty  thousand  square  miles  of  wilderness  lands,  which 
Penn  was  to  rule  as  proprietor.  Penn  dedicated  the  new  province  of 
Pennsylvania,  as  the  King  called  it,  to  religious  liberty,  and  welcomed 
thither  not  only  Quakers  but  men  of  every  religious  faith.  He  spent 
the  larger  part  of  his  time  in  England,  making  but  two  visits  to  America, 
but  as  a  colony  planter  there  was  no  other  colonial  leader  so  great  as 
he.  His  character  enabled  him  to  embrace  an  unpopular  religion  and 
at  the  same  time  retain  the  friendship  of  men  of  prominence  who  had 
no  sympathy  with  his  views.  He  arranged  the  government  of  Pennsyl 
vania  so  that  the  people  enjoyed  large  powers  of  self-government  in 
their  own  legislature.  The  country  was  a  poor  man's  paradise,  a 
refuge  for  the  oppressed  of  every  nation.  Land  was  fertile  and  cheap, 
wages  high,  the  Indians  friendly,  and  no  portion  of  the  English  frontier 
on  the  mainland  enjoyed  a  more  rapid  growth.  In  the  first  twenty 
years  the  new  arrivals  numbered  over  twenty  thousand,  principally 
Germans  and  Scotch-Irish,  who  were  fleeing  from  religious  and  political 
persecution  at  home.  The  first  settlement  in  Pennsylvania,  Philadel 
phia,  "the  city  of  brotherly  love,"  founded  in  1683,  soon  outstripped 
in  population  every  other  American  town. 


76 


THE  EUROPEAN  COLONIES 


Of  all  the  colony  builders  on  the  mainland  William  Penn  was  the 
most  successful  in  dealing  with  the  Indians.  His  treaty  with  the 
Successful  Delawares,  made  under  an  elm  tree  at  a  point  now  within 
treatment  of  Philadelphia  itself,  was  not  written  out  in  words,  nor  was 
ns'  an  oath  taken  when  it  was  made;  only  mutual  pledges 
of  peace  and  friendship  were  exchanged  to  hold  while  the  "creeks 
and  rivers  run,  and  while 
the  sun,  moon,  and  stars 
endure";  a  treaty,  it  was 
said,  "never  sworn  to  and 
never  broken."  For 
many  years  a  white,  man 
in  Quaker  garb  was  called 
by  the  Indians  a  "  William 
Penn  man"  and  was  un 
molested. 

Because  of  the  inability 
of  the  heirs  of  Lord  Balti 
more  and  William  Penn  to 
agree  on  the  boundary 
line  between  Maryland 
and  Pennsylvania  a  long 
dispute  arose  which  was 
settled,  1764-1767,  when 


The  line  of 
Mason  and 
Dixon. 


two  British 


surveyors, 

Mason  and 
Dixon,  ran  the  present 
boundary  line  at  39°  44'.  WILLIAM  PENN 

This  was  the  Mason  and 

Dixon  line,  later  famous  as  the  boundary  between  slavery  and  free 
dom  in  the  eastern  part  of  the  United  States. 

That  Pennsylvania  might  have  an  outlet  of  its  own  to  the  sea,  the 
royal  proprietor  of  New  York  ceded  to  William  Penn  the  three  lower 

counties  on  the  Delaware  River,  which  the  Dutch  had 

taken  from  the  Swedes  and  the  English  from  the  Dutch. 
This  little  colony,  known  as  Delaware,  differed,  like  New  York  and 
New  Jersey,  from  the  other  mainland  English  colonies  in  having  been 
first  settled  by  other  than  English  people,  and  differed  from  all  the 
other  mainland  colonies  in  passing  under  the  control  of  two  other  pow 
ers  before  it  was  made  an  English  colony.  Penn  granted  the  Delaware 
region  its  own  legislature,  though  he  retained  his  rights  as  proprietor. 


Delaware. 


ENGLISH  AMERICA  UNDER  THE  LATER  STUARTS         77 

Thus  Penn  was  at  the  same  time  Proprietor  of  Pennsylvania  and 
Delaware,  and  at  one  time  had  a  share  in  New  Jersey. 

THE  DOMINION  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

The  acquisition  of  New  York,  New  Jersey,  and  Delaware  from 
the  Dutch,  and  the  foundation  of  Carolina  and  Pennsylvania  gave  the 
English  a  continuous  line  of  colonies  from  Maine  to  the  Union  of  the 

Carolinas.     Opportunity   had   come   for   attempting   an    colonies 

i  •  •  i  •  i  ,1  •  i       \i_        -LT-       attempted, 

ambitious  plan,  which  was  nothing  more  nor  less  than  the 

cancellation  of  the  charters  of  all  the  corporate  and  proprietary  colonies 
and  their  union  into  a  single  grand  colony  of  the  royal  type.  Massa 
chusetts,  with  Maine  and  also  New  Hampshire,  served  as  the  nucleus, 
and  to  these  Plymouth  and  Rhode  Island  were  first  added,  then  Con 
necticut,  New  York,  and  New  Jersey.  The  united  colonies  were 
called  the  Dominion  of  New  England;  and  in  practice  the  plan  went 
no  further,  though  it  was  originally  intended  to  add  Pennsylvania, 
Maryland,  Carolina,  and  the  Bahamas.  Inasmuch  as  Bermuda, 
Virginia,  and  the  various  islands  of  the  West  Indies  were  already  royal 
provinces,  the  way  would  have  been  prepared  for  one  vast  royal 
colony,  had  the  Dominion  of  New  England  succeeded. 

Edmund  Andros,  formerly  governor  of  New  York  and  New  Jersey, 
arrived  in  Boston  in  1686  as  the  first  governor  of  the  Dominion  of 
New  England,  authorized  to  rule  without  the  aid  of  the  Nature  of 
colonial  legislatures  and  with  none  of  the  restrictions  of  the  umon- 
a  charter.  The  boundaries  of  the  separate  colonies  were  wiped  out. 
That  the  rule  of  absolutism  might  be  safeguarded,  it  was  necessary 
for  the  King  to  gain  possession  of  the  existing  charters.  That  of  Con 
necticut  was  spirited  away  by  zealous  patriots  from  the  very  presence 
of  the  governor  himself  under  cover  of  darkness,  and  hidden,  so  the 
story  goes,  in  the  hollow  of  a  tree,  afterwards  known  as  the  Charter 
Oak;  and  that  of  Rhode  Island  was  also  withheld  from  him. 

The  rule  of    Andros    was   arbitrary  in   the    extreme.    The  rule  of 
He  made  laws  and  imposed  taxes  without  the  consent    Governor 
of  the  people,  interfered  with  the  decisions  of  the  courts    J 
and  with  land  titles,  and  forcibly  introduced  the  Church  of  England 
into  Puritan  Boston. 

GENERAL   REFERENCES 

CHANNING.  United  States,  II;  FISKE,  Dutch  and  Quaker  Colonies;  FISHER,  Penn 
sylvania;  I.  SHARPLESS,  Quaker  Government  in  Pennsylvania;  E.  McCRADY,  South 
Carolina  under  the  Proprietary  Government,  South  Carolina  under  the  Royal  Govern 
ment,  and  South  Carolina  as  a  Royal  Province;  R.  H.  TOPPAN,  Edward  Randolph; 
ANDREWS,  Colonial  Self-government. 


78  THE  EUROPEAN  COLONIES 

SPECIAL  TOPICS 

1.  BACON'S  REBELLION.    Epochs,  II,  164-173;  Contemporaries,  I,  242-246;  OS- 
GOOD,  Colonies  in  the  Seventeenth  Century,  III,  242-279;  AVERY,  United  States,  III, 
28-45- 

2.  THE   QUAKERS.     OSGOOD,   Colonies  in  the  Seventeenth  Century,   I,    269-289; 
Contemporaries,  I,  479-486;  Source  Book,  80-82;  FISKE,  Dutch  and  Quaker  Colonies, 
II,  108-114. 

3.  THE  ENGLISH  CONQUEST  OF  NEW  NETHERLAND.    Epochs,  II,  153-164;  Con- 
temporaries,  I,  537-541;  Original  Narratives  —  A^  Netherland,  447-466;  WINSOR, 
America,  III,  385-420. 

4.  WILLIAM  PENN  AND  PENNSYLVANIA.     FISKE,  Dutch  and  Quaker  Colonies,  II, 
114-170,  and  295-316;  0/J  South  Leaflets,  IV,  95,  and  VII,  171;  Epochs,  II,  180-191; 
Contemporaries,  II,  65-68,  and  74-77;  Original  Narratives  —  Ear/;y  Pennsylvania,  etc.; 

I.  SHARPLESS,  Quaker  Experiment;  Source  Book,  67-69. 

5.  EARLY  NEW  JERSEY.     Source  Book,  62-65;  FISKE,  DM/C&  a«d  Quaker  Colonies, 

II,  10-16;  Original  Narratives  —  Early  Pennsylvania,  West  Jersey,  etc. 

6.  THE  PIRATES.     Contemporaries,  II,  244-247;  C.  H.  HARING,  Buccaneers;  S.  C. 
HUGHSON,  Carolina  Pirates;   J.  ESQUEMELING,  Buccaneers;    R.  D.   PAINE,  Buried 
Treasure. 

7.  THE  DOMINION  OF  NEW  ENGLAND.     OSGOOD,  Colonies  in  the  Seventeenth  Cen 
tury,  III,  378-414;  AVERY,  United  States,  III,  125-154. 

ILLUSTRATIVE   MATERIAL 

HAWTHORNE  (in  Twice  Told  Tales],  Edward  Randolph's  Portrait,  The  Gentle  Boy, 
and  Gray  Champion;  WHITTIER,  Pennsylvania  Pilgrim;  H.  BUTTERWORTH,  Wampum 
Belt;  M.  JOHNSTON,  Prisoners  of  Hope;  M.  W.  FREEMAN,  Heart's  Highway. 

SUGGESTIVE  QUESTIONS 

In  what  respects  did  English  colonization  after  1660  differ  from  that  before  1660? 
Compare  the  experiences  of  the  Quakers  in  the  various  colonies.  What  was  com 
mendable  and  what  was  not  commendable  in  the  scheme  of  the  Dominion  of  New  Eng 
land?  Criticize  the  Grand  Model  of  the  Carolina  proprietors.  Give  reasons  for  the 
rapid  progress  of  early  Pennsylvania.  Sum  up  the  effects  in  America  of  the  English 
Restoration  of  1660. 


CHAPTER   VIII 

ENGLISH    AMERICA.     INFLUENCE    OF    THE    ENGLISH 
REVOLUTION  OF    1688 

THE  two  later  Stuarts,  Charles  II  and  James  II,  failed  to  learn  a 
lesson  from  the  fate  of  their  father,  Charles  I,  and  were  guilty  of  the 
same  "tyrannical   and   arbitrary  government."     In   re-    The  arbi- 
ligious  affairs  James  II  favored  an  even  more  extreme    plater6  °f 
course  than  had  his  father  before  the  Puritan  Revolution,    Stuart  Kings 
for  while   Charles  I  had  merely  wished  to  retain   the    inEneland- 
Established  Church  and  to  force  the  Non-conformists  to  accept  it, 
James  cherished  the  hope  of  leading  his  Protestant  subjects  back 
to  the  religion  of  the  Pope.     James  did  not  entirely  dispense  with 
Parliament,  but  claimed  and  exercised  the  right  to  suspend  its  laws 
temporarily  in  some  cases  and  in  other  cases  to  dispense  with  them 
entirely.     In  America,  as  we  have  seen,  he  took   the   radical   step 
of  depriving  the  people  of  their  legislatures;    his  measures  against 
the  charters   of   the  New  England  colonies    had  their  counterpart 
across  the  water  in  the  taking  away  by  Charles  II    of  the  charters 
of  many  English  towns.     His  subjects  at  home,  too,  found  James  II, 
like  his  father,  extremely  cruel  in  the  administration  of  justice. 

Yielding  at  last  to  the  wrath  of  his  subjects,  James  in  1688  "  with 
drew  himself  out  of  the  kingdom  and  thereby  abdicated,"  thus  escaping 
the  dire  fate  of  the  tyrant  of  1649.  A  refugee  in  France,  The  Bloodless 
under  the  protection  and  encouragement  of  the  French  Revolution. 
government  he  was  safe  from  the  vengeance  of  the  English;  but  he 
was  never  able  to  recover  his  lost  throne,  and  Parliament  was  left  free 
to  regulate  the  powers  of  the  English  kingship  as  it  saw  fit.  This  it 
proceeded  to  do.  The  new  King  and  Queen,  William  and  Mary,  who 
ascended  the  throne  in  1689  at  the  invitation  of  the  English  Parliament, 
reigned  with  greatly  reduced  powers,  while  at  the  expense  of  the  Crown 
the  powers  of  Parliament  were  increased.  The  rights  of  the  people 
were  formulated  by  Parliament  in  the  Bill  of  Rights,  which  included 
the  following  provisions:  i,  laws  should  not  be  suspended  by  the 
monarch;  2,  no  taxation  should  be  levied  without  the  consent  of  the 
people  assembled  in  Parliament;  3,  the  right  of  petition  to  the  govern 
ment  was  guaranteed  to  the  people;  4,  freedom  of  speech  in  Parlia 
ment  was  guaranteed;  5,  excessive  fines  were  not  to  be  imposed;  and  6, 

79 


8o  THE  EUROPEAN  COLONIES 

Parliament  should  be  assembled  frequently.  To  this  programme  of 
popular  rights  the  King  and  Queen  were  obliged  to  subscribe.  The 
Stuart  pretensions  tp  royal  supremacy  over  the  will  of  the  people  as 
expressed  in  Parliament  were  at  an  end. 

The  immediate  effect  in  America  of  the  "Bloodless  Revolution" 

in  England  was  the  dissolution  of  the  Dominion  of  New  England  into 

.    the  various  colonies  of  which  it  was  originally  composed. 

Dissolution  of     _,  ,    .  , 

the  Domin-  Governor  Andros  was  arrested  in  1689  by  the  people  of 
En  ?ai5ew  Boston  and  sent  back  to  England  a  prisoner,  and  Massa 
chusetts,  with  Plymouth  added,  shortly  afterwards  re 
ceived  a  new  charter  as  a  royal  colony.  The  right  of  the  people  of 
Massachusetts,  however,  to  elect  their  own  governor,  which  they  had 
enjoyed  up  to  1684,  when  they  lost  their  charter  as  a  corporate  colony, 
was  not  regained.  New  Hampshire  again  became  a  separate  royal 
colony.  Rhode  Island  and  Connecticut  resumed  their  former  charters 
as  separate  colonies,  and  the  large  powers  which  they  had  enjoyed  under 
them  were  restored.  In  New  York  the  government  was  usurped  by  a 
German  merchant,  Jacob  Leisler,  who  held  the  reins  of  power  for  two 
years  and  was  then  hanged  as  a  traitor.  The  colony  regained  the 
legislative  assembly  which  James  II  had  taken  away,  and  both  New 
York  and  New  Jersey  became  royal  colonies. 

A  second  and  far-reaching  result  of  the  "  Glorious  Revolution  of 
1688"  was  the  precipitation  of  a  long  conflict  with  France,  which,  in 
turn,  led  the  English  government  to  make  important 
with  France  changes  in  its  methods  of  colonial  administration.  Wil- 
^am  °^  Orange,  as  a  Protestant  and  as  Stadtholder  of 
Holland,  had  already  waged  a  long  conflict  with  the 
Roman  Catholic  King  of  France  in  behalf  of  the  liberties  of  his  native 
country,  and  after  he  ascended  the  throne  of  England,  with  the  power 
of  the  English  army  and  navy  and  national  resources  behind  him,  he 
naturally  desired  to  continue  the  old  struggle.  The  English  people 
were  not  averse  to  such  a  programme,  for  they  resented  the  French 
espousal  of  the  cause  of  James  II.  With  such  an  attitude  on  the  part 
of  both  the  monarch  and  his  people,  the  change  in  England  from  the 
days  of  Charles  II  and  James  II,  who  allowed  themselves  to  make 
secret  and  unpatriotic  promises  to  the  King  of  France  in  return  for 
millions  of  French  money  with  which  to  meet  the  ordinary  expenses  of 
their  administration,  was  striking  indeed. 

Not  only  in  Europe,  but  also  in  America,  the  two  rival  powers  were 

Am  r  a       jealously  watching  one  another.     By  1689,  when  the  new 

order  of  things  was  established  in  England,  France  had 

built  up  a  long  frontier  in  the  interior  of  North  America  on  the  north 


INFLUENCE  OF  THE  ENGLISH  REVOLUTION  OF  1688      81 

and  west  of  the  English  settlements  on  the  seaboard,  which  was  far 
more  of  a  menace  to  the  English  colonial  empire  than  the  Dutch  colony 
of  New  Netherland  had  ever  been. 

In  preparation  for  the  impending  conflict,  which  was  destined  to 
have  important  effects  upon  colonial  affairs,  the  English  began  to  set 
their  American  frontier  in  order.     The  Board  of  Trade    changes  in 
and    Plantations   was   appointed   in    London    to    secure    colonial  ad- 
stricter  enforcement  of  the  navigation  laws,  to  investigate 
conditions  in  the  colonies,  and  to  make  recommendations  as  to  the 
colonial  policy  of  the  government.     Before  the  first  shots  were  fired 
against  the  French  and  after  the  wars  started,  new  plans  were  seriously 
considered  in  London  for  the  union  of  the  colonies  into  one  grand 
division  somewhat  after  the  model  of  the  Dominion  of  New  England, 
but  without  the  arbitrary  features  of  that  discredited  scheme.     Under 
the  stress  of  military  necessity  a  congress  assembled  in  New  York  in 
1690  to  make  plans  for  common  defense,  although  nothing  definite  was 
accomplished.- 

As  a  third  result  of  the  Revolution  of  1688,.  the  supremacy  of  Par 
liament  rather  than  of  the  King  raised  a  constitutional  question  for  the 
Americans.     Did  they  owe  the  same  allegiance  to  Par-    The  new 
liament  as  they  had  to  the  Crown,  by  which  their*  charters    constitutional 
had  been  granted?     If  Parliament,   with  its  increasing    que 
authority,  had  exercised  its  new  powers  in  colonial  affairs  mildly,  the 
question  might  never  have  become  troublesome;   but  in  time  Parlia 
ment  chose  to  exercise  its  powers  in  a  way   very  offensive  to  the 
colonists,  and  they  responded,  as  we  shall  see,  by  throwing  off  the 
yoke  entirely. 

Before  the  changes  flowing  from  the  English  Revolution  of  1688 
were  fully  developed,  the  last  English  colony  was  founded  in  Georgia 
in  1 733.  A  charter  was  granted  to  a  board  of  "  trustees  "  or  The  founding 
proprietors,  the  leader  of  whom  was  James  Oglethorpe,  an  of  Georsia- 
English  philanthropist.  The  colony  was  designed  to  be  a  refuge  for 
the  King's  poverty-stricken  subjects,  for  the  unfortunate  debtors  in 
the  English  prisons,  for  the  many  Protestant  refugees  from  the  German 
states  who  were  within  his  realm,  and  for  the  distressed  in  general. 
Georgia  was  in  reality  a  colony  in  trust  for  the  poor,  a  genuine  interna 
tional  charity.  The  first  settlement  was  made  at  Savannah.  Hither 
came  John  and  Charles  Wesley  and  George  Whitfield,  prominent  Non 
conformist  English  evangelists,  who  visited  the  American  colonies  in 
the  interests  of  Christian  missions,  and  here  Whitfield  founded  an  or 
phan  asylum.  Aside  from  philanthropic  considerations,  the  mother 
country  was  glad  to  have  the  new  outpost  on  the  southern  boundary  of 


82  THE  EUROPEAN  COLONIES 

her  American  frontier,  to  serve  as  an  additional  barrier  against  the 
Spaniards  in  Florida.  With  the  poverty-stricken  .refugees,  Georgia 
was  not  at  first  prosperous,  but  Germans  from  Salzburg  and  Scotch 
Highlanders  early  furnished  a  more  desirable  class  of  settlers. 

The  "  trustees  "  of  Georgia  at  first  followed  in  the  steps  of  the  pro 
prietors  of  the  Carolinas  by  denying  self-government  to  their  colo- 
The  govern-  nists,  but  they  were  soon  forced  to  grant  this  right  to 
ment  of  the  people.  In  1752  the  King  took  Georgia  into  his  own 

hands  and  it  became  a  royal  colony.  The  proprietors  of 
Maryland  and  Pennsylvania,  who  early  granted  self-government  to 
their  colonists,  were  the  only  proprietors  on  the  mainland  to  retain 
their  rights  down  to  1776.  Oglethorpe  lived  to  see  the  colony  which 
he  had  founded,  together  with  twelve  other  English  colonies  along 
the  seaboard,  throw  off  the  yoke  of  the  mother  country  in  the  War  of 
Independence. 

From  1733  back  to  the  first  permanent  English  settlement  in  1607 
there  stretched  a  period  of  one  hundred  and  twenty-five  years,  during 
Resume  of  which  the  English  people  had  set  up  over  twenty  colonies 
English  colo-  in  America.  Few  migrations  in  the  world's  history  equal 
this  one  in  interest,  and  none  equal  it  in  the  immensity  of 
the  results  accomplished.  The  line  of  the  English  colonies  on  the 
mainland  extended  from  Maine  to  Florida.  Denmark  and  Russia,  as 
rival  colonial  powers,  were  negligible,  Sweden  and  Holland  had  been 
eliminated,  and  Spain  on  the  south  was  no  longer  formidable;  only 
France  on  the  north  and  west  and  beyond  the  Appalachians  remained. 
A  death  struggle  was  impending,  which  would  determine  whether 
French  or  English  civilization  was  to  prevail  on  the  continent  of  North 
America. 

GENERAL  REFERENCES 
CHANNING,  United  States,  II;  ANDREWS,  Colonial  Period. 

SPECIAL  TOPICS 

1.  LEISLER'S  REBELLION.     Contemporaries,  I,  544-547;  OSGOOD,  Colonies  in  the 
Seventeenth  Century,  III,  444-476;  FISKE,  Dutch  and  Quaker  Colonies,  II,  183-208. 

2.  THE  OVERTHROW  OF  ANDROS  IN  NEW  ENGLAND.     Old  South  Leaflets,  II,  3,  4; 
OSGOOD,  Colonies  in  the  Seventeenth  Century,  III,  415-443;  FISKE,  Dutch  and  Quaker 
Colonies,  II,  176-179. 

3.  OGLETHORPE  IN  GEORGIA.    H.  BRUCE,  General  Oglethorpe. 

SUGGESTIVE  QUESTIONS 

What  were  the  effects  in  America  of  the  English  Revolution  of  1688?  Give  an 
account  of  Andres's  career  as  colonial  governor  in  America. 


CHAPTER  IX 
FRENCH  AMERICA 

THE  first  Frenchmen  to  reach  America  were  fishermen,  who  began 
to  arrive  off  Newfoundland  as  early  as  1504,  but  their    prench  fish- 
huts  along  the  coast  could  hardly  be  accounted  settle-    ing  settle 
ments  and  they  gave  France  no  hold  on  the  country. 

Permanent  French  settlements  came  slowly.     Their  first  attempts 
to  follow  up  the  explorations  of  Verrazano  and  Cartier  and  secure  a 
foothold  on  the  mainland  were  failures.     The  site  of  Que-    The  failure 
bee,  discovered  by  Cartier  in  1535,  was  not  permanently    of  the  first 
settled   for   seventy-three   years,    and    during    the   long    ^Fr^nctf 
interval,  while  the  French  were  expending  their  energies    at  coloniza- 
at  home  in  religious  wars,  they  failed  in  every  attempt 
they  made  at  frontier  settlement.     The  French  Protestants,  or  Hugue 
nots,  fleeing  from  religious  persecutions,  first  sought  a  refuge  in  far- 
off  Brazil  in  1555,  but  were  slaughtered  by  the  Portuguese,  who  were 
there  before  them. 

One  Huguenot  party,  reaching  the  St.  John's  River  in  Florida  in 
1562,  made  its  way  north  to  Port  Royal  in  what  is  now  South  Carolina, 
and  failed  utterly  in  its  attempt  to  establish  a  settlement.  The  French 
Another  expedition  of  the  Huguenots  arrived  on  the  St.  in  Florida- 
John's  River  two  years  later,  just  before  the  terrible  Spaniards 
under  Menendez  arrived  on  the  same  peninsula.  There  are  few 
sadder  tales  of  frontier  struggle  than  this  meeting  of  the  representa 
tives  of  the  two  Christian  powers  of  Spain  and  France  in  Florida. 
Pedro  Menendez,  following  in  the  wake  of  De  Leon,  Narvaez,  and  De 
Soto,  arrived  in  Florida  in  1565  with  over  one  thousand  followers  and 
founded  St.  Augustine,  the  first  permanent  white  settlement  within 
the  present  boundaries  of  the  United  States.  The  one  hundred  and 
forty-two  Huguenots  whom  he  found  on  the  St.  John's  River,  Menendez 
massacred  in  cold  blood.  Another  detachment  of  two  hundred,  and 
still  another  of  one  hundred  and  fifty,  he  ambushed  and  murdered. 
Three  years  later  the  French  took  their  revenge,  when  Dominique 
Gourges,  at  the  head  of  a  large  force,  arrived  from  France,  fell  upon 

83 


84 


THE  EUROPEAN  COLONIES 


Permanent 
settlement  of 
French 
Canada. 


the  Spaniards  and  put  them  all  to  the  sword,  except  fifteen  or  twenty 
whom  he  hanged.  As  Menendez  was  said  to  have  hanged  some  of  his 
victims  from  the  trees  under  the  inscription,  "Not  as  to  Frenchmen, 
but  as  to  Lutherans,"  so  Gourges  nailed  over  his  last  victims  the 
words,  "Not  as  to  Spaniards,  but  as  to  liars  and  murderers."  The 
French  made  no  more  attempts  to  appropriate  this  part  of  the  country, 
and  Florida  remained  in  the  hands  of  the  Spaniards. 

At  the  close  of  their  religious  wars  in  1598,  the  French  again  turned 
their  attention  to  Canada,  this  time  under  the  patronage  of  one  of  their 
greatest  kings,  Henry  IV.  In  1603  the  King  granted  to 
Sieur  de  Monts  permission  to  colonize  the  habitable  Ameri 
can  shores  north  of  the  latitude  of  Philadelphia,  and  in 
1605  one  of  De  Monts'  companions  established  the  first 
permanent  French  settlement  on  the  continent  at  Port  Royal  in 

Nova  Scotia.  The  greatest  of 
French  explorers  and  frontier 
builders,  Samuel  de  Champlain, 
founded  Quebec  in  1608  and 
Montreal  in  1 6 1 1 .  As  lieutenant- 
governor  of  New  France,  1608- 
1635,  Champlain  was  ruling  in 
the  north  when  the  English  Pil 
grims  arrived  at  Plymouth,  the 
Puritans  in  Boston,  and  the 
Dutch  on  the  Hudson. 

The  history  of  New  France 
was  far  different  from  that  of 
the  English  frontier  to  the  south. 
There  were  no  separate  colonies 
in  New  France  with  independent 
administration,  and  no  popular  law-making  assemblies.  The  whole 
The  ater-  °^  the  French  territory  was  united  in  one  colony  under 
nalism  of  the  unrestricted  power  of  the  French  King.  Under  him, 
irue'  as  "the  true  father  and  savior  of  Canada,"  who  exer 
cised  "every  care"  regarding  it,  the  governor  assumed  the  reins  of 
administration,  assisted  by  other  officials  of  royal  appointment. 

The  whole  system  was  feudal,  similar  to  that  in  New  Netherland 
and  to  that  attempted  in  Carolina.  The  common  man  could  not  own 
The  common  land,  but  ^or  tne  privilege  of  occupying  it  must  pay  rent 
people  bound  to  his  lord  or  seigneur,  grind  his  corn  at  his  lord's  mill, 
bake  his  bread  at  his  lord's  oven,  and  pay  fees  for  the 
privilege.  He  must  do  manual  labor,  too,  for  his  lord  during  a  certain 


SAMUEL  DE  CHAMPLAIN 


FRENCH  AMERICA 


number  of  days  in  the  year,  and  perform  his  part  in  the  making  and 
mending  of  the  roads  and  bridges  in  the  community. 

Only  Frenchmen  and  Roman  Catholics  were  acceptable  as  set 
tlers.     The  King  took  it  upon  himself  to  pay  the  traveling  expenses  of 
immigrants    to    his    colony.     When    there    were    fewer    sparse 
women  than  men  in  the  settlements,  he  sent  out  young    population, 
women  to  be  the  settlers'  wives,  and  as  a  wedding  gift  presented  to 
each  couple  "an  ox,  a   cow,  a 
pair  of  swine,  a  pair  of  fowls, 
two  barrels  of  salted  meat,  and 
eleven    crowns    in    money." 
After  fifty  years  of  effort  Que 
bec  numbered  but  six  hundred 
people,  and  the  whole  of  Canada 
in  1688  only  eleven  thousand. 

Though  they  never  succeeded 
in  reconciling  to  themselves  the 
Iroquois,  whom  Champlain  had 
estranged  in  1609,  the  French  by  unusual  kindness  gained  the  friend 
ship  of  most  of  the  Indians  with  whom  they  came  in  con-    Reiations 
tact  and  converted  them  to  Christianity  in  large  numbers,    with  the 
They  lived  with  them,  took  on  their  manners  and  cus 
toms,  intermarried  with  them,  and  in   general   brought   themselves 
down  to  the  Indian  level.     The  English,  who  held  themselves  more 
aloof,  were  never  so  successful  in  winning  the  Indian  heart. 

Priests  and  lay  missionaries  accompanied  the  settlers  to  labor  for 
the  spread  of  Christianity  among  the  natives,  and  Quebec,  the  capital 
of  the  country,  was  filled  with  churches  and  religious  •  The  Jesuits 
houses.  To  these,  as  to  places  of  refuge,  many  a  lady  of  in  America- 
France  fled  for  religious  solitude.  The  very  rivers,  bays,  and  capes 
received  religious  names.  New  France  represented  the  best  spirit  of 
the  Roman  Catholic  Church.  From  1611  to  1800  three  hundred  and 
twenty  Frenchmen,  members  of  the  Society  of  Jesus,  Jesuits  as  they 
were  called,  labored  as  missionaries  in  the  wilds  of  America.  This 
remarkable  Roman  Catholic  order,  which  originated  in  Europe  in  1534 
with  seven  members,  numbered  thousands  by  the  time  of  the  French 
migrations  to  America.  Its  missionaries  were  scattered  in  China, 
Japan,  Brazil,  and  Paraguay,  and  soon  they  reached  the  interior  of 
North  America,  where  they  rendered  important  services  in  exploration 
as  well  as  in  Christianizing  the  natives.  Finer  devotion  to  Christian 
ideals  was  never  exhibited,  greater  dangers  and  sufferings  in  the  name 
of  religion  never  encountered.  The  Jesuits  traveled  in  birch-bark 


THE  FIRST  BUILDING  IN  QUEBEC,  1608 


86  THE  EUROPEAN  COLONIES 

canoes ;  their  food  was  the  dried  corn  of  the  natives  and  smoked  buffalo 
meat;  and  their  home  was  the  entire  interior  of  the  continent.  They 
faced  torture,  hardship,  and  death,  and  almost  every  one  of  them  died 
in  active  service. 

In  the  wonderful  twenty  years  of  colony  building  from  1620  to 
1640  the  French  as  well  as  the  English  sent  out  scores  of  vessels  to  the 
The  French  islands  of  the  West  Indies.  It  was  said  that  they  arrived 
West  Indies.  at  gt  Christopher  or  St.  Kitts  on  the  very  day  of  the 
arrival  of  the  English  there  in  1625;  at  any  rate,  both  nations  were 
early  established  in  the  island.  By  1660  the  French  had  succeeded 
in  occupying  thirteen  small  islands,  including  Guadaloupe,  Martinique, 
Tortuga,  and  a  part  of  the  large  island  of  Santo  Domingo  or  Haiti, 
which  they  wrested  from  the  Spaniards.  By  1685  the  total  population 
of  the  French  islands  was  twenty-seven  thousand,  including  whites 
and  blacks,  which  was  more  than  twice  as  many  as  in  the  whole  of 
Canada.  The  progress  of  Santo  Domingo  in  the  eighteenth  century 
was  so  great  that  in  1771  its  population  reached  245,000  (220,000 
slaves).  Among  the  colonies  of  the  English  only  Massachusetts, 
Pennsylvania,  and  Virginia  were  more  populous. 

The  first  attempt  of  the  French  to  settle  around  the  mouth  of  the 
Mississippi,  in  the  country  which  they  called  Louisiana,  was  made  after 
The  French  La  Salle  reached  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  by  his  famous  voyage 
at  the  mouth  down  that  river  in  1682.  There  came  hither,  first,  the  colo- 
sissippi  nizing  expedition  led  by  La  Salle  himself,  which  ended 

River.  jn  shipwreck  and  disaster;  second,  an  expedition  under 

Iberville  and  Bienville  in  1699,  which  effected,  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Mississippi,  a  settlement  later  moved  to  the  present  site  of  Mobile; 
and  third,  an  expedition  which  founded  New  Orleans  in  1718;  all  to 
the  great  displeasure  of  the  Spanish  in  Florida,  who  proceeded  to 
establish  Pensacola  as  a  menace  to  the  intruders.  Louisiana,  harassed 
by  war  and  poverty,  grew  slowly. 

Possessed  of  settlements  on  the  St.  Lawrence  and  on  the  Mis 
sissippi,  which  constituted  entering  wedges  of  a  great  inland  and 
possibly  continental  empire,  the  part  of  the  French  was 
bilitiesSSof  obviously  to  fill  in  the  intervening  country  along  the 
future  devel-  magnificent  waterways  that  beckoned  them  on  from  the 
north  and  from  the  south,  and  to  crowd  the  English  on 
their  east  to  the  Atlantic. 

GENERAL  REFERENCES 

PARKMAN,  Pioneers  of  France,  Frontenac,  and  Old  Regime;  WINSOR,  Cartier  to 
Frontenac;  THWAITES,  France  in  America. 


FRENCH   AMERICA  87 

SPECIAL  TOPICS 

1.  THE  JESUITS  IN  AMERICA.    PARKMAN,  Jesuits;  WINSOR,  America,  IV,  263-294; 
Contemporaries,  I,  129-132. 

2.  CHAMPLAIN  AS  DISCOVERER  AND  COLONY  BUILDER.    WINSOR,  America,  IV, 
103-129;  G.  PARKER  and  C.  G.  BRYAN,  Old  Quebec,  19-43. 

ILLUSTRATIVE   MATERIAL 

K.  MUNROE,  Flamingo  Feather;  CATHERWOOD,  Lady  of  Fort  St.  John,  and  Story 
of  Tonty. 

SUGGESTIVE   QUESTIONS 

What  are  the  effects  of  paternalism,  such  as  that  practiced  by  France  in  Canada? 
What  were  the  effects  of  the  soil  and  climate  of  Canada  on  French  colonization?  In 
what  English  colonies  were  the  French  Huguenots  prominent?  What  two  important 
Canadian  cities  did  Champlain  found?  Describe  the  beginning  of  each.  Compare 
events  in  New  France  with  contemporary  events  in  the  English  colonies. 


CHAPTER  X 
BRITISH   AND   FRENCH   AMERICA 

PRELIMINARY   STRUGGLES 

To  the  English  settlers  along  the  shores  of  the  Atlantic,  the  French 
in  Nova  Scotia,  in  the  Valley  of  the  St.  Lawrence,  and  beyond  the 
Early  Appalachians  were  interlopers  on  English  domain.  Pre- 

attacks.  liminary  struggles  between  the  two  powers  began  in  the 

early  days  of  settlement.  In  1613  an.  expedition  from  Jamestown 
wiped  out  a  French  settlement  on  the  Maine  coast  at  Mount  Desert 
Island;  and  a  few  years  later,  while  England  and  France  were  at  war 
in  Europe,  another  English  expedition  forced  Champlain  to  lower  the 
standard  of  France  at  Quebec,  only  to  see  their  defeated  rival  restored 
by  the  treaty  of  peace  of  1632.  From  time  to  time  other  skirmishes 
took  place  between  the  outposts  of  New  France  and  New  England. 
Wars  were  carried  on  between  the  two  powers  for  the  possession  of 
the  West  Indies,  where  almost  every  island  changed  hands  once  and 
some  many  times,  and  for  the  possession  of  the  Indian  fur  trade  on 
the  shores  of  Hudson  Bay.  Hostility  to  France  became  a  ruling 
passion  in  England  after  William  of  Orange  ascended  the  throne  in 
1689,  and  the  second  "Hundred  Years'  War"  between  the  two 
nations,  which  was  to  last  with  brief  intervals  of  peace  till  1815, 
opened  at  once. 

King  William's  War,  1689-1697,  Queen  Anne's  War,  1702-1713, 
and  King  George's  War,  1744-1748,  each  so  called  from  the  name  of  the. 
King  Wil-  English  monarch  reigning  at  the  time,  were  the  American 
QueenWarf  phases  of  contemporary  English-French  struggles  in 
Anne's  War,  Europe,  arising  respectively  out  of  the  disputes  over  the 
George?!  a^  °f  ^e  French  to  James  II,  over  the  succession  to  the 
War-  Spanish  throne,  and  over  the  succession  to  the  throne 

of  Austria. 

In  the  course  of  Queen  Anne's  War  the  Act  of  Union  was  passed  by 
Union  of  ^e  English  Parliament  in  1707,  uniting  Scotland  and 

England  and  England  into  one  kingdom,  with  one  King  and  one  Par 
liament,  so  that  from  that  date  the  government  of  the 
mother  country  should  be  spoken  of  as  British  rather  than  as  English. 

Foreseeing  the  inevitable  clash,  the  English  in  1684  had  taken  the 

88 


BRITISH  AND  FRENCH  AMERICA 


89 


•£ 


: :  (Tiutor^iii-^  ,w      t>x:-:-     -. 


precaution  of  cementing  their  union  with  the  Iroquois  Indians  by  a 
formal  alliance,  which  made  the  Iroquois  British  sub-    The  part  of 
jects  and  their  territory  British  territory.     The  French,    the  Indians 
on  their  part,  in  return  for  the  assistance  which  Champlain 
had  given  to  the  Algonquins  in  the  historic  fight  of  the  latter  with  the 
Iroquois  in   1609, 
demanded  and  se 
cured   the   aid  of 
these  against    the 
British;    and    this 
aid  they  used  most 
ruthlessly,     as 
Indian  massacre 
after  Indian  mas 
sacre  of  the  Eng 
lish  colonists  along 
the    lone   frontier 
abundantly    testi 
fies.     In  the  mid 
dle  of  the  winter 
of  1690,  during 
King  William's 
War,  the  village  of 
Schenectady,  New 
York,   was   the 
scene  of  a  massa 
cre  of  sixty  of  its 
inhabitants  at  the 
hands     of     the 
French      and 
Indians,  who  had 
come  all  the  way  from  Canada  on  their  murderous  mission.     They  fell 
upon  their  victims  in  the  night,  and  before  morning  every  house  was  in 
ashes;  only  a  few  survivors  escaped  in  the  darkness  over  the  paths  of 
snow  to  Albany.     A  similar  fate  befell  Portland  and  York  in  Maine, 
Salmon  Falls  and  Durham  in  New  Hampshire,  and  Groton,  Deerfield, 
and  Haverhill  in  Massachusetts.     The  latter  town  suffered  on  two 
different  occasions. 

By  the  treaty  of  Ryswick  ending  King  William's  War  in  1697,  there 
were  no  exchanges  of  territory,  but  by  that  of  Utrecht  in  Exchanges  of 
1713,  at  the  close  of  Queen  Anne's  War,  although  France    territory- 
succeeded  in  maintaining  her  hold  on  Canada,  she  was  obliged  to  give 


r~~~l  Spanish 


NORTH  AMERICA  IN  1713 


90  THE  EUROPEAN  COLONIES 

up  to  the  British  the  two  provinces  of  Acadia  and  Newfoundland,  which 
guarded  the  entrance  to  Canada  on  the  Gulf  of  St.  Lawrence,  and  to 
recognize  the  British  claims  to  the  Hudson  Bay  country  in  the  interior. 
Disagreement  arose  over  the  limits  of  Acadia  almost  immediately  after 
the  signing  of  the  treaty.  The  British  claimed  that  Acadia  included 
Cape  Breton  Island,  all  of  what  is  now  Nova  Scotia,  all  of  what  is 
now  New  Brunswick,  and  all  of  Maine  as  far  as  the  Kennebec,  while 
the  French  insisted  that  Acadia  was  confined  to  the  present  limits  of 
Nova  Scotia.  France  proceeded  to  enforce  her  claims  by  the  erection 
of  a  fortress  at  Louisburg  on  Cape  Breton  Island,  at  the  southern  en 
trance  to  the  Gulf  of  St.  Lawrence.  There  were  two  miles  of  stone 
masonry  and  four  hundred  cannon  in  the  fort.  Manifestly  France 
was  determined  to  stand  guard  over  this  entrance  to  her  Canadian 
dominions. 

This  formidable  fortress  was  taken  during  King  George's  War  by 
the  New  England  militia  under  Colonel  Pepperrell  of  Maine,  acting  in 
The  fate  of  conjunction  with  a  strong  British  fleet,  taken,  however, 
Louisburg.  onjy  to  ke  gjven  back  in  the  treaty  of  peace  in  1748,  when 
the  British  judged  the  concession  to  be  necessary  in  order  to  recover 
certain  posts  which  had  been  captured  from  them  by  the  French  in 
India.  The  New  Englanders  never  quite  forgave  the  mother  country 
for  the  slight  in  this  treaty  of  Aix-la-Chapelle. 

THE  SEVEN  YEARS'  WAR     |1-£"G    -    (3^ 

The  various  conflicts  between  the  French  and  the  British  down  to 
1750  were,  so  far  as  America  was  concerned,  mere  border  warfare,  in 
The  struggle  which  little  was  accomplished  toward  deciding  the  mastery 
for  the  in-  of  the  continent.  The  decisive  blows  were  struck  in  the 
yond  the  Ap-  Seven  Years'  War  or  the  French  and  Indian  War,  1756- 
palachians.  1763.  Whereas  the  former  wars  were  mainly  reflections  of 
European  differences,  this  final  conflict  arose  primarily  out  of  British 
colonial  affairs  in  India  and  America,  and  was  waged  on  a  world-wide 
scale  up  to  that  time  unknown.  As  a  result  of  a  new  wave  of  immigra 
tion,  which  had  set  in  about  1718,  the  British  had  laid  down  a  new  or 
second  frontier  in  America  several  hundred  miles  from  the  coast  in  the 
"back  country"  of  the  Shenandoah  Valley,  stretching  southward  from 
Pennsylvania.  By  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  settlers  were  in  this  newer  West.  Thus,  the  British  of  the 
seaboard  came  to  have  a  frontier  of  their  own,  and  some  were  be 
ginning  to  think  of  planting  still  a  third  frontier  beyond  the  mountains 
in  what  is  now  Ohio,  Kentucky,  and  Tennessee.  Advance  surveying 
parties  reached  these  farthest  regions  in  1750.  Unlike  their  brethren 


BRITISH  AND  FRENCH  AMERICA  gi 

in  the  islands  of  the  West  Indies,  the  colonists  on  the  mainland  had 
plenty  of  room  on  the  west  in  which  to  expand,  could  they  but  gain 
a  firm  hold  on  that  territory. 

The  French  in  Canada,  on  the  Mississippi,  and  on  the  Gulf  of  Mexico, 
laid  claim  to  the  same  rich  territory  in  the  interior  of  the  continent, 

particularly  to  the  Ohio  Valley,  which  was  the  immediate 

,    /  .  /\_       -n          i  1-1  i     French  ex- 

bone  of  contention.     One   French  party,   which  passed    pansioninto 

down  the  Ohio  in  1749,  nailing  up  signboards  and  burying  *he  same 
lead  plates  to  proclaim  the  land  as  belonging  to  the  King  of 
France,  was  only  one  year  ahead  of  the  English  surveyors.  Further 
to  enforce  their  claims,  in  defiance  of  the  warning  of  the  governor  of 
Virginia  delivered  to  them  by  his  representative,  young  George  Wash 
ington,  the  French  in  1753  erected  a  new  line  of  three  forts  south  from 
Lake  Erie  in  western  Pennsylvania;  and  the  next  year,  after  first 
driving  away  the  British,  whom  they  found  at  the  head  of  the  Ohio 
River,  already  at  that  time  recognized  as  the  "gateway  to  the  West," 
they  erected  there  Fort  Duquesne.  Upon  the  arrival  of  British  militia 
from  Virginia,  a  skirmish  took  place  between  the  rival  forces,  in  which 
George  Washington  is  said  to  have  ordered  the  first  shot  fired;  and  later 
in  the  same  year  of  1754,  at  a  stockade  called  Fort  Necessity,  Washing 
ton  was  compelled  to  surrender  the  post  though  not  his  men.  The 
Seven  Years'  War  had  begun,  although  as  yet  no  formal  declaration 
of  hostilities  had  been  made. 

In  1754,  at  the  call  of  the  King,  who  was  keenly  alive  to  the  dif 
ficulties  of  waging  the  contest  with  the  French  while  his  frontier 
remained  divided  into  a  number  of  separate  colonial  gov 
ernments,  the  British  colonies  on  the  mainland  sent  dele-  the^itish  to 
gates  to  Albany,  New  York,  to  devise  if  possible  some  plan 
of  union  in  face  of  the  common  danger.  The  object  was  to 
repeat  under  different  circumstances  and  on  a  larger  scale,  but  from 
the  same  motives  of  military  necessity,  ____ _^ ^^_^__ 
the  union  effected  by  four  of  the  New 

England  colonies  in  the  seventeenth  cen-  -^^  NJO        oft 

tury.  The  scheme  agreed  upon  in  the 
congress  was  known  as  the  Albany  Plan  of 
Union  and  was  proposed  by  Benjamin 
Franklin.  It  provided,  first,  for  an  annual 
council,  to  be  composed  of  delegates  from  FRANKLIN'S  DEVICE  TO  ENCOUR- 

all  the  colonies,  with   power  to  pass    laws      £GE  UNION    PIRST   USED   IN   THE 

.      .  Pennsylvania  Gazette 

on  such   important   matters   as    colonial 

taxation,  public  lands,  and  Indian  and  military  affairs;  and,  second, 

for  a  president  general,  to  be  appointed  by  the  King,  and  to  possess  the 


92  THE  EUROPEAN  COLONIES 

power  to  veto  the  acts  of  the  council  and  to  appoint  important  colonial 
officials.  The  mutual  jealousies  of  the  colonies,  however,  would  not 
tolerate  the  surrender  of  such  great  powers  to  a  new  central  govern 
ment,  and  the  plan  was  rejected. 

The  next  year,  1755,  in  military  preparation  for  the  coming  struggle, 
the  British  took  two  important  steps.     In  an  attempt  to  make  sure 
Braddock's       of  their  hold  on  the  disputed  territory  in  the  West,  they 
returned  to  the  vicinity  of  Fort  Duquesne  with  two  regi 
ments  of  regulars  from  Great  Britain  and  a  body  of  Virginia  militia. 

General  Braddock  was  in 
command,  and  George 
Washington  was  in  the 
little  army  in  what  was 
now  his  fourth  trip  over 
the  mountains  to  the 
west.  Never  had  such  a 
fine  military  display  been 
seen  in  America;  but 
Braddock  underesti 
mated  the  prowess  of  his 
French  and  Indian  oppo 
nents,  and  when  Wash 
ington  advised  him  to 
instruct  his  men  to  fight 
after  the  manner  of  the 
Indians,  each  man  for 
himself,  from  behind 
rocks  and  trees,  he 
spurned  the  counsel.  He 
paid  dearly  for  the  re 
fusal,  and  that  speedily, 

BENJAMZN  FKANKUK  when>    f   ^    c°mmand, 

most   of   the   regulars 

fought  in  close  European  formation,  in  which  seven  hundred  of  them 
were  slain,  including  Braddock  himself  and  a  large  proportion  of  his 
officers.  Only  Washington's  resourcefulness  averted  the  total  destruc 
tion  of  the  British.  The  loss  of  the  French  and  the  Indians  reached 
barely  half  a  hundred. 

At  the  same  time  the  British  were  endeavoring  to  secure  their  hold 
on  the  strategic  country  of  Nova  Scotia  or  Acadia,  where  the  French 
inhabitants,  almost  a  half  a  century  after  their  conquest,  still  refused 
to  recognize  the  British  as  their  rulers.  A  band  of  soldiers  was  des- 


BRITISH  AND  FRENCH  AMERICA  93 

patched  to  enforce  the  order  that  the  Nova  Scotians  take  the  oath  of 

allegiance  or  leave  the  country.     Overwhelming  military    ^^ 

force  had  no  terrors  for  the  simple  Acadians,  who  to  the    tation  af°the 

number  of  almost  seven  thousand  submitted  to  deporta- 

tion  rather  than  swear  themselves  subjects  of  King  George, 

and   they   were   scattered   throughout   the  British   possessions   from 

Maine  to  the  far  south. 

Geographically  the  British  frontier  on  the  mainland  had  a  decided 
advantage  in  the  coming  struggle,  in  its  compact  and  unbroken  line 

of  settlements  which  had  not  yet  dissipated  their  strength 

/      .  .      ,  .  A  view  of  the 

to  any  great  extent  by  expansion  beyond  the  Appalachians    belligerents. 

into  the  interior.  The  scattered  population  of  the  French,  £^rrsaphical 
on  the  other  hand,  stretched  all  the  way  from  Canada  to 
Louisiana.  Moreover,  the  St.  Lawrence  River  in  the  north,  frozen 
over  during  a  large  part  of  the  year,  and  the  Mississippi,  with  its  hidden 
sand  bars,  rendered  access  to  the  interior  of  the  French  possessions  dif 
ficult.  In  the  West  Indies  geographical  advantages  were  about  even. 

In  total  population  on  the  mainland  and  in  the  islands  the  advantage 
was  overwhelmingly  with  the  British,  whose  2,000,000  in-    po  ulati 
habitants  outnumbered  the  French  by  at  least  fifteen  to  one. 

The  British  colonists,  devoted  to  political  discussion,  trial  by  jury, 
freedom  of  the  press,  and  popular  lawmaking,  possessed  a  self-reliance 
utterly  foreign  to  the  dependent  French  subjects  under    self-govern- 
an  absolute  monarchy,  who  knew  nothing  of  Anglo-Saxon    merit  versus 
liberty;  but  the  uniformity  of  plan  and  counsel  of  the    pat 
French,  under  one  supreme  command,  had  advantages  over  the  mutual 
dissensions  and  bickerings  of  their  rivals. 

After  the  war  had  formally  begun  in   1756,  the  fighting  at  first 
centered  at  the  outposts  lying  between  the  French  and  the  British  settle 
ments,  possession  of  which  would  give  either  party  oppor- 
tunity  to  invade  the  territory  of  the  other.     In  the  critical    important 
year  of  1758  the  first  strategic  point  was  taken  by  the    events  of  the 
British,  when  for  a  second  time  they  captured  the  fortress 
of  Louisburg  on  Cape  Breton  Island.     This  victory  enabled  them  the 
better  to  send  an  expedition  up  the  St.  Lawrence  against  Quebec, 
while  at  the  same  time  it  deprived  the  French  of  a  base  of  operations 
from  which  to  send  an  expedition  by  sea  against  Boston  or  New  York. 
The  next  month,  by  the  capture  of  Fort  Frontenac  on  Lake  Ontario, 
where  the  lake  empties  into  the  St.  Lawrence,   the  British  gained 
possession  of  that  inland  water  route  approaching  Quebec  on  the  west, 
and  before  the  end  of  the  year  they  won  possession  of  the  "gateway  to 
the  west"  by  the  capture  of  Fort  Duquesne.     Here  the  cluster  of 


94  THE  EUROPEAN  COLONIES 

cabins  was  named  Pittsburg  in  honor  of  the  British  Secretary  of  State, 
William  Pitt. 

"  We  are  forced  to  ask  every  morning  what  new  victory  there  is,  for 
fear  of  missing  one,"  wrote  Horace  Walpole  in  England  at  the  time.  A 
William  tide  of  victory  had  set  in  for  the  British  that  was  destined 

Pitt-  to  sweep  on  to  the  utter  routing  of  the  French;  and  the 

minister  at  the  head  of  affairs,  who  was  responsible  for  the  success, 
was  William  Pitt.  Frederick  the  Great  of  Prussia  said  of  him:  " Eng 
land  has  at  last  brought  forth  a  man."  Pitt  was  arrogant  and  con- 


QUEBEC 

^•eited,  but  he  proved  to  be  the  man  of  the  hour  for  his  country,  a 
patriotic,  honest,  and  creative  statesman,  possessed  of  wonderful  judg 
ment  and  ability  to  inspire  energy  and  enthusiasm  in  the  nation. 
By  a  treaty  which  he  made,  the  British  paid  to  the  Prussians  almost 
three  and  a  half  million  dollars,  in  order,  as  Pitt  said,  to  defeat  France 
in  Germany.  Pitt  also  was  behind  Robert  Clive,  the  young  British 
general  who  was  winning  India  from  the  French. 

In  1759  the  British  got  a  firmer  hold  on  the  inland  water  route  west 
of  Quebec  by  the  capture  of  Niagara,  and  later  in  the  same  year  they 
More  British  secured  the  approaches  to  Quebec  from  the  south  by 
victories.  the  reduction  of  Forts  Ticonderoga  and  Crown  Point  on 
Lake  Champlain. 


BRITISH  AND  FRENCH  AMERICA 


95 


The  siege  of  Quebec  itself  lasted  three  months.    Situated  at  the  top 
of  a  cliff  two  hundred  feet  above  the  water,  at  the  juncture  of  the  St. 
Charles  River  with  the  St.  Lawrence,  the  stronghold  seemed  The  ^^^ 
impregnable,  but  it  was  taken  at  last  by  the  strategy  of  the  of  Quebec, 
young  British  commander,  General  Wolfe.    By  a  clever  move 
the  British  scaled  the  heights  in  the  dead  of  night  and  in  the  early  morning 
drew  up  on  the   Plains 
of  Abraham,  above  the 
city,   to    the   utter   sur 
prise  of  the  French  gar 
rison.     In    the    fighting 
which  ensued  both  Wolfe 
and  the  defending  com 
mander,  Montcalm,  were 
killed.  When 
informed 
that  the  en 
emy  were  in 


THE 

BRITISH  COLONIES 
1700 


Boundary  of  British  Colonies 
Territory  in  dispute  between 
France  and  England 

G7J  WMS.INU.CO..N.Y. 


flight,  the  wounded  Wolfe  gave  an  order 
and  turned  upon  his  side,  murmuring, 
"Now,  God  be  praised,  I  shall  die  in 
peace!"  The  defeated  Montcalm  said  to 
the  surgeon,  who  informed  him  that  his 
wound  was  mortal,  "So  much  the  bet 
ter,  I  shall  not  live  to  see  Quebec  sur 
rendered." 

France    lost   every   one    of   her   West 
Indian  possessions  in  the  course  of  the  war,  and  Spain,  which  had  joined 
France  because  of  complications  of  the  war  in  Europe,  lost  The  British 
Havana  in  Cuba  to  a  force  of  two  thousand  British  militia  victory  com- 
from  the  mainland.     Only  illness  among  the  British  troops  ple 
prevented  them  from  passing  on  to  essay  the  conquest  of  the  French 


96 


THE  EUROPEAN  COLONIES 


on  the  Mississippi.    In  the  Far  East  Great  Britain  captured  the  Spanish 
Philippine  Islands  and  the  French  possessions  in  India. 

By  the  terms  of  the  treaty  of  Paris  in  1763,  which  ended  the  war,  the 
British  brought  their  empire  in  America  to  its  largest  extent.  They 
The  treaty  of  gained  the  disputed  territory  between  the  Appalachians 
Pans,  1763.  an(j  £he  Mississippi,  where  the  claims  of  the  French  ceased 
forever,  and  the  whole  of  Canada,  with  the  exception  of  two  small 

islands     off     the 
fishing  banks   of 
Newfoundland, 
which  the  French 
had  held  since  the 
peace  of  Utrecht 
and  were  now  al 
lowed  to  continue 
to  hold  but  never 
to     fortify.       In 
the  West  Indies, 
where    the    con 
quests      of      th 
British  were  com 
plete,  the  French 
were  allowed   to 
regain   the   three 
important    sugar 
islands  of  Guada- 
loupe,      Martini 
que',     and     St. 
Lucia,     probably 
because  the  jeal 
ous  sugar  plant 
ers  of  the  British 
islands  were  op 
posed  to  admitting  their  old  rivals  into  the  advantages  of  the  British 
colonial  system.     There  were  those  who  urged  that  Canada  be  given 
back  to  the  French,  on  the  ground  that  in  hostile  French  hands  that 
province  would  serve  to  render  the  seaboard  colonies  of  the  British 
farther  south  more  loyal  to  the  mother  country,  in  proportion  as  it 
rendered  the  protection  of  the  British  army  and  navy  more  necessary. 
Even  at  this  time  it  would  seem  that  the  loyalty  of  some  of  the  British 
colonies  was  suspected.    The  statesmen  of  Great  Britain  were  swayed 
by  the  dream  of  a  mighty  colonial  empire  and  they  decided  to  keep 


NORTH  AMERICA  IN  1763 


BRITISH  AND  FRENCH  AMERICA  97 

Canada,  relying  on  their  ability  to  hold  the  colonies  farther  south  by 
other  means.  By  a  treaty  between  Spain  and  Great  Britain,  the  former 
power  was  allowed  to  recover  Cuba  and  the  Philippines,  but  was  de 
prived  of  Florida,  which  went  to  Great  Britain,  while  Spain  received 
from  France,  in  still  a  third  treaty,  the  claims  of  the  latter  power  to 
the  interior  of  North  America  west  of  the  Mississippi,  including  New 
Orleans.  French  influence  with  the  nations  of  India  was  lost  to  the 
British. 

GENERAL   REFERENCES 

CHANNING,  United  States,  II;  PARKMAN,  Half  Century  of  Conflict,  Monlcalm 
and  Wolfe,  and  Conspiracy  of  Pontiac;  FISKE,  New  France  and  New  England;  E.  B. 
GREENE,  Provincial  America;  SPARKS,  Expansion,  69-77. 

SPECIAL  TOPICS 

1.  INDIAN  MASSACRES.     Source  Book,  98-100;  C.  H.  LINCOLN,  Indian  Wars,  1675- 
1699. 

2.  BRADDOCK'S    DEFEAT.     Epochs,    III,    39-51;    Contemporaries,    II,    365-367; 
Source  Book,  103-105;  HULBERT,  Historic   Highways,  IV,  15-135;    A  VERY,    United 
States,  IV,  60-79. 

3.  THE  DEPORTATION  OF  THE  ACADIANS.     Epochs,  III,  51-58;  Contemporaries^ 
II,  360-365;  AVERY,  United  States,  IV,  93-112. 

4.  THE  CAPTURE  OF  QUEBEC.    Old  South  Leaflets,  III,  73,  and  VII,  4;  Epochs,  III, 
58-66;  Contemporaries,  II,  369-372;  Source  Book,  105-107;  AVERY,  United  States,  IV, 
273-295;  G.  PARKER  and  C.  G.  BRYAN,  Old  Quebec,  268-298. 

ILLUSTRATIVE  MATERIAL 

LONGFELLOW,  Evangeline;  WHITTIER,  Pentucket;  G.  PARKER,  Seats  of  the  Mighty; 
HAWTHORNE,  Grandfather's  Chair,  Part  II;  K.  MUNROE,  At  War  with  Pontiac; 
COOPER,  Last  of  the  Mohicans. 

SUGGESTIVE   QUESTIONS 

In  what  sense  was  the  British  defeat  of  the  French  a  critical  event  in  the  history 
of  North  America?  Compare  the  Albany  plan  of  union  with  the  previous  plans  of 
colonial  union.  What  was  the  influence  of  the  British-French  wars  on  the  American 
Revolution?  What  was  the  strategic  importance  of  the  forts  at  Louisburg  and  at  Fort 
Duquesne?  Why  did  the  British  deport  the  Acadians?  Did  the  French  or  the  British 
have  the  better  claim  to  the  Ohio  Valley?  On  what  did  the  Spaniards,  the  English, 
the  French,  and  the  Dutch,  base  their  respective  claims  to  North  America?  State  the 
possessions  of  the  different  nations  in  America  after  1763.  Describe  the  political 
organization  and  government  of  New  France,  and  show  wherein  New  France  re 
sembled,  and  wherein  it  differed  politically  from,  the  British  colonies. 


PART   III 
THE   REVOLT   OF   THE   BRITISH    COLONIES 

CHAPTER   XI 
BRITISH  AMERICA  IN  1763 

•     POPULATION  AND   IMMIGRATION 

ALTHOUGH  in  1763  there  were,  roughly  speaking,  three  different 
lines  of  British  settlements  stretching  parallel  to  the  Atlantic  Coast, 
The  sparse-  a11  in  different  stages  of  development;  first,  that  on  the 
ness  of  popu-  seaboard,  second,  that  in  the  Shenandoah  Valley,  and 
third,  that  of  which  barely  a  beginning  had  been  made 
west  of  the  Appalachians;  not  one  of  these  was  clearly  beyond  the 
frontier  stage.  Even  the  seaboard  colonies  were  far  removed  from 
settled  conditions  and  far  behind  the  mother  country  in  material 
progress.  Population  was  sparse.  The  only  towns  having  10,000 
inhabitants  or  over  were  Philadelphia  with  18,000,  and  New  York  and 
Boston  with  15,000  each;  Charleston,  South  Carolina,  the  next  largest, 
numbered  9000.  With  few  roads  and  bridges,  communication  be 
tween  the  various  sections  was  difficult.  People  staid  at  home  per 
force.  Upset  vehicles,  stage  coaches  and  horses  stuck  in  the  mud, 
overturned  ferry  boats,  and  uncomfortable  inns  on  the  way  were 
generally  sufficient  obstacles  to  all  but  the  most  necessary  travel. 

The  most  populous  colonies  were  Virginia  with  345,000  people, 
Massachusetts  with  235,000,  Pennsylvania  with  220,000,  and  Jamaica 
Total  with  184,000.  From  1700,  when  the  number  of  inhabit- 

popuiation.  ^  ants  on  j-frg  mainland  was  about  250,000,  population  there 
had  almost  doubled  every  twenty  years,  reaching  approximately  500,000 
in  1720,  1,000,000  in  1740,  and  2,000,000  in  1760. 

Almost  every  one  was  an  immigrant' or  the  son  or  grandson  of  an 
immigrant.  America  was  holding  out  arms  of  welcome  to  all  who 

would  come  to  her  shores  and  lend  a  hand  in  the  work  of 
Immigration.  .  ....  .  . 

reducing  the  continent  to  civilization.  Said  Benjamin 
Franklin  in  London  to  prospective  emigrants  to  his  native  land: 
"  Much  less  is  it  advisable  for  a  person  to  go  thither  who  has  no  other 

08 


BRITISH  AMERICA  IN  1763  99 

quality  to  recommend  him  but  his  birth.  In  Europe  indeed  it  has 
value;  but  it  is  a  commodity  that  cannot  be  carried  to  a  worse  market 
than  to  that  of  America,  where  people  do  not  inquire  concerning  a 
stranger,  What  is  he?  but  What  can  he  do?  If  he  has  any  useful  art, 
he  is  welcome;  if  he  exercises  it,  and  behaves  well,  he  will  be  respected  by 


COLONIAL  STAGE 

all  that  know  him;  but  a  mere  man  of  quality,  who  on  that  account 
wants  to  live  on  the  public,  by  some  office  or  salary,  will  be  despised  and 
disregarded.  .  .  .  Land  being  cheap  in  that  country,  from  the  vast 
forests  still  void  of  inhabitants,  and  not  likely  to  be  occupied  in  an  age 
to  come,  insomuch  that  the  propriety  of  an  hundred  acres  of  fertile 
soil  full  of  wood  may  be  obtained  near  the  frontiers  in  many  places,  for 
eight  or  ten  guineas,  hearty  young  laboring  men,  who  understand  the 
husbandry  of  corn  and  cattle,  which  is  nearly  the  same  in  that  country 
as  in  Europe,  may  easily  establish  themselves.  A  little  money,  saved 
out  of  the  good  wages  they  receive  there  while  they  work  for  others, 
enables  them  to  buy  the  land  and  begin  their  plantation,  in  which  they 


ioo  THE  REVOLT  OF  THE  BRITISH  COLONIES 

are  assisted  by  the  good  will  of  their  neighbors,  and  some  credit.  Mul 
titudes  of  poor  people  from  England,  Ireland,.. Scotland,  and  Germany, 
have  by  this  means  in  a  few  years  become  wealthy  farmers,  who  in  their 
own  countries,  where  all  the  lands  are  fully  occupied,  and  the  wages  of 
labor  low,  could  never  have  emerged  from  the  mean  condition  wherein 
they  were  born." 

Declaring  that  the  people  of  the  new  continent  sprang  from  a 
" promiscuous  breed,"  Crevecceur,  himself  a  French  immigrant,  wrote 
"What  is  an  as  follows  in  the  last  half  of  the  eighteenth  century: 
American?"  "What  then  is  an  American,  this  new  Man?  He  is  neither 
an  European,  nor  the  descendant  of  an  European;  hence  that 
strange  mixture  of  blood,  which  you  will  find  in  no  other  country. 
I  could  point  out  to  you  a  family,  whose  grandfather  was  an  English 
man,  whose  wife  was  Dutch,  whose  son  married  a  French  woman,  and 
whose  present  four  sons  have  now  four  wives  of  different  nations.  He 
is  an  American,  who  leaving  behind  him  all  his  ancient  prejudices  and 
manners,  receives  new  ones  from  the  new  mode  of  life  he  has  embraced, 
the  new  government  he  obeys,  and  the  new  rank  he  holds.  He  becomes 
an  American  by  being  received  into  the  broad  lap  of  our  great  'alma 
mater.'  Here  individuals  of  all  nations  are  melted  into  a  new  race  of 
men,  whose  labors  and  posterity  will  one  day  cause  great  changes  in 
the  world.  Americans  are  the  western  pilgrims,  who  are  carrying  along 
with  them  that  great  mass  of  arts,  sciences,  vigor,  and  industry,  which 
began  long  since  in  the  east.  They  will  finish  the  great  circle.  The 
Americans  were  once  scattered  over  all  Europe.  Here  they  are  incor 
porated  into  one  of  the  finest  systems  of  population  which  has  ever 
appeared.  .  .  .  The  American  is  a  new  man,  who  acts  upon  new 
principles;  he  must  therefore  entertain  new  ideas,  and  form  new 
opinions.  From  involuntary  idleness,  servile  dependence,  penury  and 
useless  labor,  he  has  passed  to  toils  of  a  different  nature,  rewarded  by 
ample  subsistence.  .  .  .  This  is  an  American." 

Although  comparatively  few  immigrants  came  to  her  from  England 
after  the  Restoration  of  the  Stuarts  in  1660,  New  England  throughout 
The  different  the  colonial  period  remained  almost  purely  English;  and 
races-  the  same  race  predominated  in  the  eastern  or  seaboard  sec 

tions  of  Maryland,  Virginia,  and  the  Carolinas,  while  in  Delaware,  New 
Jersey,  Pennsylvania,  and  New  York,  the  English  were  mingled  with 
the  Dutch,  Swedes,  Germans,  Scotch-Irish,  and  other  races.  The 
so-called  Pennsylvania  Dutch  were  properly  not  Dutch  at  all,  but 
Germans  who  found  a  refuge  in  Eastern  Pennsylvania  from  the  devas 
tation  of  wars  and  tyranny  in  their  own  states  at  home.  The  Scotch- 
Irish  were  people  of  Scotch  descent,  from  the  north  of  Ireland,  mainly 


BRITISH  AMERICA  IN  1763  yc-i 

Ulster,  who  left  their  homes  to  escape  industrial  and  religious  oppres 
sion.  They  came  by  thousands;  in  some  years  ten  thousand  arrived  in 
Pennsylvania  alone.  America  probably  gained  half  a  million  inhab 
itants  by  this  great  migration.  A  few  went  into  New  Hampshire,  but 
the  greater  part  of  them  poured  into  the  interior  regions  of  Pennsyl 
vania  and  south  from  there  along  the  foot-hills  of  the  Appalachians, 
where  they  were  the  predominant  race,  although  there  were  also  found 
here  many  French  Huguenots,  German  Quakers  or  Mennonites,  Scotch 
Highlanders,  Swiss,  Welsh,  and  Irish.  Nearly  all  of  these  immigrants 
were  Protestants,  poor  in  this  world's  goods,  fleeing  the  wars,  persecu 
tions,  and  untoward  conditions  of  Europe. 

OCCUPATIONS 

On  the  seaboard  and  in  the  new  West  agriculture  was  well-nigh 
universal.     The  New  Englander  on  his  barren  and  rocky  farm  raised 
the  simple  necessities  of  life  but  could  boast  of  no  great    Agriculture 
staple  New  England  crop.     The  planters  of  the  southern    universal, 
colonies,  on  the  other  hand,  and  those  in  the  West  Indies,  were  blessed 
with  the  valuable  staple  crops  of  tobacco,  sugar,  rice,  and  indigo,  which 
they  raised  largely  to  the  exclusion  of  other  products.     The  islands 
indeed  produced  sugar  so  extensively  that  some  of  them  were  habitually 
spoken  of  as  the  sugar  islands,— the  British  sugar  islands  and  the 
French  sugar  islands. 

New  England  was  a  land  of  villages  and  small  farms.  There  the 
one  long  village  street  was  usually  found,  bordered  by  farmhouses, 

with  the  farms  stretching  back  in  either  direction;   the    , 

i  i  i        i         -I  i     i  •         -I  ne  country 

ever-present  meetinghouse,  where  the  church-going  habits    villages  of 

of  the  people  encouraged  sociability  as  well  as  piety;  the    J^nJEng" 
town  hall,  with  its  frequent  public  discussion,  the  village 
store,  the  inn,  the  schoolhouse,  and  frequently  the   blockhouse  for 
refuge  in  case  of  attack  by  the  Indians. 

The  farm  buildings  themselves  on  any  particular  farm  were  usually 
grouped  closely  together;  in  most  cases  indeed  they  were  actually 
connected.  A  settler  on  a  New  England  farm  was  not  alone  an  agri 
culturist,  but  by  the  very  necessities  of  his  frontier  life  he  was  trapper, 
hunter,  lumberman,  and  Indian  fighter  as  well,  and  the  manufacturer 
of  his  own  farming  and  household  utensils  and  furnishings. 

In  the  country  south  of  the  Potomac,  on  the  other  hand,  where  the 
plantation,  or  very  large  farm,  was  the  unit  of  society  and  towns  and 
villages  were  little  known,  society  lacked  the  sociability    The  southern 
of  the  New  England  village  church,  town  hall,  and  store,    plantation. 
Public  inns  for  the  entertainment  of  strangers  were  rare.     Instead, 


ids"  TriE  REVOLT  OF  THE  BRITISH  COLONIES 

hospitality  was  dispensed  in  the  plantation  mansions  themselves  with 
the  grace  and  charm  of  manner  for  which  the  Southerners  became 
famous.  The  plantation  was  more  or  less  a  self-supporting  unit.  Scat 
tered  over  its  large  area  were  the  plantation  mansion,  the  slave  quarters, 
the  school,  the  blacksmith  shop,  the  carpenter  shop,  the  carriage  and 
wagon  sheds,  the  stables,  and  various  other  buildings.  Near-by  was 
usually  to  be  seen  the  stream  of  water,  where,  at  his  own  wharf,  the 
planter  loaded  his  products  for  shipment  and  unloaded  consignments 
of  needed  supplies  from  New  England  and  from  Europe. 

Between  this  aristocratic  organization  of  society  and  the  simple 
village  life  of  New  England  the  contrast  was  marked.  As  both  sugar 
and  tobacco  culture  rapidly  exhausted  the  soil,  and  as 
systems  of  new  lands  were  cheap  and  easy  to  obtain,  the  typical 
compared6  southern  plantation  was  many  times  larger  than  the  New 
New  England  farm,  that  the  fields  might  lie  fallow  at 
intervals  for  recuperation.  The  labor  of  black  slaves  was  made  use 
of  in  all  sections,  but  mainly  in  the  South,  where  the  whites  were 
unable  to  endure  the  strain  of  manual  labor  in  the  intense  heat.  More 
over,  in  the  less  fertile  North,  where  farming  was  more  intensive  and 
more  skilled  labor  was  required  than  in  the  South,  black  labor  was 
not  generally  profitable. 

In  the  middle  colonies  —  New  York,  New  Jersey,  Pennsylvania,  and 
Delaware  —  agriculture  partook  more  of  the  character  of  that  in  New 
Agriculture  in  England  than  of  that  of  the  southern  colonies.  The  farms 
the  middle  of  these  colonies,  with  the  exception  of  the  patroon  estates 
of  New  York,  were  smaller  than  the  southern  plantations, 
and  their  crops  were  varied  as  in  New  England,  though  their  richer 
soil  made  them  a  more  promising  agricultural  region  than  rocky  New 
England. 

Making  a  clearing  in  the  woods  presented  much  the  same  problem 
throughout  America,  whether  on  the  seaboard,  in  the  Shenandoah 
Making  a  Valley,  or  west  of  the  Appalachians.  The  Marquis  de 
farm  in  the  Chastellux,  an  officer  of  the  French  army,  who  traveled 
5SS'  through  the  country  between  1780  and  1790,  has  de 
scribed  the  settlement  of  the  frontier  as  follows:  " While  I  was  medi 
tating  on  the  great  process  of  nature,  which  employs  fifty  thousand 
years  in  rendering  the  earth  habitable,  a  new  spectacle,  well  calcu 
lated  as  a  contrast  to  those  which  I  had  been  contemplating,  fixed 
my  attention,  and  excited  my  curiosity;  this  was  the  work  of  a  single 
man,  who  in  the  space  of  a  single  year  had  cut  down  several  harpents 
of  wood,  and  built  himself  a  house  in  the  middle  of  a  pretty  extensive 
territory  he  had  already  cleared.  I  saw  for  the  first  time,  what  I  have 


BRITISH  AMERICA  IN  1763  103 

since  observed  a  hundred  times;  for,  in  fact,  whatever  mountains  I 
have  climbed,  whatever  forests  I  have  traversed,  whatever  by-paths  I 
have  followed,  I  have  never  traveled  three  miles  without  meeting  a 
new  settlement,  either  beginning  to  take  form  or  already  in  cultivation. 

"The  following  is  the  manner  of  proceeding  in  these  improvements, 
or  new  settlements.  Any  man  who  is  able  to  procure  a  capital  of  five 
or  six  hundred  livres  in  our  money,  or  about  twenty-five  pound  ster 
ling,  and  who  has  strength  and  inclination  to  go  to  work,  may  go  into 
the  woods  and  purchase  a  portion  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  or  two  hun 
dred  acres  of  land,  which  seldom  costs  him  more  than  a  dollar  or  four 
shillings  and  sixpence  an  acre,  a  small  part  of  which  only  he  pays  in 
ready  money.  There  he  conducts  a  cow,  some  pigs,  or  a  sow,  and  two 
indifferent  horses  which  do  not  cost  him  more  than  four  guineas  each. 
To  these  precautions  he  adds  that  of  having  a  provision  of  flour  and 
cider.  Provided  with  this  first  capital,  he  begins  by  felling  all  the 
smaller  trees,  and  some  strong  branches  of  the  large  ones;  these  he 
makes  use  of  as  fences  to  the  first  field  he  wishes  to  clear;  he  next  boldly 
attacks  those  immense  oaks,  or  pines,  which  one  would  take  for  the 
ancient  lords  of  the  territory  he  is  usurping;  he  strips  them  of  their 
bark,  or  lays  them  open  all  around  with  his  axe.  These  trees,  mortally 
wounded,  are  the  next  spring  robbed  of  their  honors;  their  leaves  no 
longer  spring,  their  branches  fail,  and  the  trunk  becomes  a  hideous 
skeleton.  This  trunk  still  seems  to  brave  the  efforts  of  the  new  col 
onist;  but  where  there  are  the  smallest  chinks  or  crevices,  it  is  sur 
rounded  by  fire,  and  the  flames  consume  what  the  iron  was  unable  to 
destroy.  But  it  is  enough  for  the  small  trees  to  be  felled,  and  the 
great  ones  to  lose  their  sap.  This  object  completed,  the  ground  is 
cleared;  the  air  and  sun  begin  to  operate  on  that  earth  which  is  wholly 
formed  of  rotten  vegetables,  and  teems  with  the  latent  principles  of 
production. 

"The  grass  grows  very  rapidly;  there  is  pasturage  for  the  cattle 
the  very  first  year;  after  which  they  are  left  to  increase,  or  fresh  ones 
are  bought,  and  they  are  employed  in  tilling  a  piece  of  ground  which 
yields  the  enormous  increase  of  twenty  or  thirty  fold.  The  next 
year  the  same  course  is  repeated;  when  at  the  end  of  two  years,  the 
planter  has  wherewithal  to  subsist,  and  even  to  send  some  articles  to 
the  market;  at  the  end  of  four  or  five  years,  he  completes  the  payment 
of  his  land,  and  finds  himself  a  comfortable  planter.  Then  his  dwelling, 
which  at  first  was  no  better  than  a  large  hut  formed  by  a  square  of  the 
trunks  of  trees,  placed  upon  one  another,  with  the  intervals  filled  by 
mud,  changes  into  a  handsome  wooden  house,  where  he  contrives  more 
convenient  and  certainly  much  cleaner  compartments  than  those  in 
8 


104 


THE  REVOLT  OF  THE  BRITISH  COLONIES 


the  greatest  part  of  our  small  towns.     This  is  the  work  of  three  weeks 
or  a  month;  his  first  habitation  that  of  eight  and  forty  hours. 

"I  shall  be  asked,  perhaps,  how  one  man,  or  one  family  can  be  so 
quickly  lodged?     I  answer  that  in  America  a  man  is  never  alone,  never 

an  isolated  being.  The 
neighbors,  for  they  are 
everywhere  to  be  found, 
make  it  a  point  of  hos 
pitality  to  aid  the  new 
farmer.  A  cask  of  cider 
drunk  in  common,  and 
with  gaiety,  or  a  gallon 
of  rum,  are  the  recom 
pense  for  these  services. 
Such  are  the  means  by 
(a)  which  North  America, 

which  one  hundred  years 

ago  was  nothing  but  a  vast  forest,  is  peopled  with  three  millions  of 
inhabitants." 

The  first  industry  in  North  America  in  point  of  time,  extensively 
engaged  in  by  the  whites  before  the  colonies  were  established  and 
never  discontinued,  was 
fishing.  I  n 
some  way  of 
which  there  is  no  record, 
venturesome  fishermen 
reached  these  waters  im 
mediately  after  the  first 
discoveries  of  Columbus, 
and  carried  to  the  coun 
tries  of  western  Europe 
announcement  of  the 
swarming  shoals  of  fish 
off  the  shores  of  New 
foundland.  To  the  men  and  women  of  Europe  in  that  day,  who 
piously  followed  the  observances  of  the  church  concerning  the  absti 
nence  from  meat  on  the  numerous  fast  days,  the  news  was  most  wel 
come.  The  new  industry,  small  at  first,  while  Spain  was  in  control  of 
the  seas  and  the  seafarers  of  other  nations  were  constantly  liable  to 
attack,  was  rapidly  extended  when  England  became  mistress  of  the 
seas.  It  is  recorded  that  there  were  three  hundred  fishing  vessels 
of  all  nations  on  the  Grand  Banks  of  Newfoundland  in  1586,  and  one 


Fishing. 


(b) 


BRITISH  AMERICA  IN   1763 


105 


thousand  thirty  years  later;  forty  or  fifty  English  vessels  annually  made 
the  journey  thither  before  1588,  but  by  1605,  two  years  before  the 
founding  of  Jamestown,  and  fifteen  before  that  of  Plymouth,  at  least 
two  hundred  and  fifty  English  vessels  reached  the  banks  annually.     As 
the  neighboring  New  Eng 
land    frontier    was    occu 
pied,  the  number  of  fishing 
vessels   in   its  waters  and 
off  Newfoundland  rapidly 
increased,    for    the    New 
Englanders  found  fishing 
one  of  their  most  profit 
able    occupations.      A 
nearer    market    for    their 
fish  than  Europe  was  grad 
ually    developed    in    the 
West  Indies. 

Trade  with  the  Indians  was  inaugurated  by  the  early  fishermen  and 
explorers,  who  observed  along  the  shore  where  they  landed  to  dry 
their  fish  or  to  explore  the  coast,  that  the  natives  were    The  Indian 
ready  to  exchange  the  skins  of  the  fur-bearing  animals    trade- 

for  trinkets.  On  his  first 
voyage  Columbus  gave 
small  bells  and  glass 
beads  to  the  Indians  in 
trade,  and  after  him  al 
most  every  explorer  was 
a  trader  also,  Verrazano, 
La  Salle,  Champlain,  and 
John  Smith  among  the 
number.  The  last  named, 
after  his  voyage  along  the 
New  England  coast  in 
1614,  carried  to  England 


GROWTH  OF  A  PIONEER  HOME 


40,000  dried  fish,  11,000  beaver  skins,  and  200  skins  of  other  animals; 
and  he  is  authority  for  the  statement  that  in  six  years,  1616-1622, 
England  received  from  her  outposts  in  America  20,000  beaver  skins. 
In  one  period  of  five  years  soon  after  the  founding  of  the  settlement, 
Plymouth  sent  12,500  pounds  of  furs  to  the  mother  country,  and  in 
the  first  part  of  the  eighteenth  century,  Georgia  shipped  on  the  aver 
age  200,000  deer  skins  annually. 

The  moral  character  of  the  white  traders  was  often  deplorable; 


io6  THE  REVOLT  OF  THE  BRITISH  COLONIES 

they  cheated  and  debauched  the  Indians;  yet  they  were  always  in  the 
Nature  of         vanguard  of  civilization  as  it  pushed  its  way  westward, 

tradendian  f°r  it:  WaS  °n  ^e  farthest  edSe  of  tne  frontier  that  the 
Indian  trade  most  flourished.  The  Indian  loved  the 
white  man's  woolen  blanket,  which  he  quickly  learned  to  use  in 
place  of  the  more  clumsy  animal  skins,  and  in  his  simplicity  he  loved 
the  trinkets  that  were  brought  to  him;  but  more  than  these,  he  loved 
the  white  man's  rum,  and  would  never  do  without  it  as  long  as  he  had  a 
fur  or  anything  else  which  the  white  man  would  take  in  trade.  He 
preferred  British  goods  to  those  of  the  French  because  of  their  lower 
price  and  superior  quality,  and  this  preference  for  the  English  trade 
served  to  perpetuate  the  prejudice  of  the  Iroquois  against  the  French 
and  in  favor  of  the  English. 

The  profitable  British  trade  never  languished  throughout  the 
colonial  period.  When  the  British  asserted  that  they  had  gone  into 
the  French  and  Indian  War  for  the  benefit  of  their  colonists,  Benja- 
The  Indian  miri  Franklin  replied  that  in  his  opinion  that  war  had 
trade  as  a  been  waged  by  the  British  for  the  sure  possession  of  the 
Seven  Years'  " purely  English"  fur  trade  in  the  interior  west  of  the 
War-  mountains,  which  constituted  the  third  frontier  of  the  Brit 

ish  and  was  the  bone  of  contention  in  that  war. 

Another  American  industry  in  the  colonial  period  was  shipbuilding, 
centered  mainly  in  New  England,  where  the  pine  forests  furnished 
Shipbuilding  excellent  masts  for  fehips.  Here  the  royal  navy  of  Eng- 
and  land  looked  for  timber  for  many  of  its  vessels.  A  trav- 

ce*  eler  who  visited  New  England  in  1759  stated  that  from  the 
small  towns  along  a  single  river  in  New  Hampshire  two  hundred 
vessels  were  launched  annually.  Many  of  these  were  owned 
and  manned,  as  well  as  built,  in  New  England;  and  sailing  from 
Boston,  Salem,  Newburyport,  and  the  other  seaboard  towns,  they 
engaged  in  an  extensive  carrying  trade  on  the  ocean,  not  only  monopo 
lizing  the  coastwise  trade  on  the  western  shores  of  the  Atlantic  but 
even  securing  a  part  of  that  across  the  seas. 

An  interesting  trade  sprang  up  with  Africa  and  with  the  West  Indies; 
fish,  lumber,  and  food  products  were  carried  to  the  planters  of  the  sugar 
The  three  islands,  where  these  articles  were  in  demand,  and  in  return 
cornered  sugar  and  molasses  were  brought  back  in  large  quantities  to 

Africans  tne  mainland.  Hundreds  of  distilleries  sprang  up  along  the 
the  West  New  England  coast  in  the  vicinity  of  Boston  and  in  Rhode 
Indies.  Island  to  manufacture  the  sugar  and  molasses  into  rum. 

In  the  one  town  of  Newport,  Rhode  Island,  there  were  a  score  of  such 
distilleries,  and  a  large  number  in  and  about  the  Massachusetts  capital. 


BRITISH  AMERICA  IN  1763  107 

Just  as  profitable  as  the  sale  of  the  rum  to  the  Indians  and  equally 
questionable  was  the  use  made  of  the  liquor  to  buy  kidnapped 
slaves  on  the  coast  of  Africa.  Cargoes  of  the  New  England  rum 
were  taken  to  Africa,  and  in  the  returning  vessels  negro  slaves  were 
brought  back  to  be  sold  to  the  West  Indian  and  southern  main 
land  planters.  An  extensive  three-cornered  traffic  was  thus  carried 
on.  Sailing  in  their  own  vessels,  the  New  Englanders  sold  their 
products  to  the  planters  of  the  sugar  islands,  and  from  them  obtained 
the  sugar  and  molasses  which  they  carried  home  and  manufactured 
into  rum.  This  they  exchanged  in  Africa  for  the  slaves,  whom  they 
traded  for  more  molasses  and  sugar.  Profits  in  the  transaction,  both 
in  the  islands  and  in  New  England,  were  enormous. 

In  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  when  the  theaters  of 
London  desired  to  place  before  their  audiences  the  most  popular  type 
of  an  heiress  of  fortune  as  the  heroine  of  a  play,  the  young  lady  in 
question  was  almost  sure  to  be  represented  as  the  daughter  The  ros  er_ 
of  a  West  Indian  planter.  Her  marriage  was  as  popular  ityof  the 
on  the  stage  as  that  of  the  American  millionaire's  Westlndies- 
daughter  to-day  to  the  fortune-hunting  noble  of  Europe.  Hurricanes 
and  earthquakes,  tropical  rainstorms  and  yellow  fever,  and  the  ever- 
present  danger  of  slave  insurrections  combined  to  render  the  beautiful 
islands  a  less  desirable  place  of  residence  than  London,  but  they 
could  not  stop  the  profits  of  the  plantations.  On  every  one  of  the 
islands  the  blacks  outnumbered  the  whites  many  times  over.  For 
example,  in  1767,  Jamaica  numbered  17,000  whites  and  167,000  blacks. 
The  ever-increasing  number  of  the  blacks  tended  to  keep  the  whites 
away,  but  at  the  same  time  constituted  a  fair  index  of  the  prosperity 
of  the  islands.  While  the  wealth  of  the  West  Indies  far  exceeded  that 
of  the  mainland,  the  fact  that  the  islands  were  purely  agricultural  and 
must  from  their  nature  always  remain  so,  made  their  future  less  prom 
ising  than  that  of  the  colonies  on  the  mainland,  where  commerce  and 
some  slight  beginnings  of  manufacturing  augured  future  industrial 
development. 

In  1733,  at  the  desire  of  the  sugar  planters  of  the  British  West 
Indies,  the  British  Parliament  in  London  passed  the  so-called  Molasses 
Act,  requiring  the  importers  of  sugar  and  molasses  from    The  Moias_ 
non-British  territory  to  pay  a  heavy  tax  or  tariff  duty,    ses  Act  of 
when  these  articles  were  brought  into  British  ports,  and    1733* 
allowing  the  British  sugar  and  molasses  to  come  in  free  of  duty.     This 
was  an  attempt  to  force  the  colonists  of  the  mainland  to  buy  their 
sugar  and  molasses  from  their  brethren  of  the  British  islands  only. 
The  products  from  the  French  islands  were  generally  preferred  to  the 


io8  THE   REVOLT  OF  THE  BRITISH  COLONIES 

British  products,  so  that  the  New  Englanders  continued  to  make  their 
purchases  in  the  French  islands  and  to  smuggle  their  cargoes  into  the 
ports  at  home  free  of  duty  in  defiance  of  the  law,  which  could  not  be 
enforced  against  local  public  opinion. 

In  view  not  only  of  their  independent  spirit  but  also  of  their  exten 
sive  trade  interests,  it  can  be  seen  how  unpopular  among  the  Americans 
The  working  must  nave  been  tne  other  navigation  acts  as  well  as  the 

of  the  navi-  Molasses  Act,  by  which  Great  Britain  sought  to  regulate 
gation  laws.  ,-,  •,  f  A  /  -, 

the   trade   of   the  colonies.     It  was  a  hardship   to   the 

colonists  to  be  forbidden  to  buy  and  sell  certain  articles  on  the 
continent  of  Europe,  just  as  it  was  a  hardship  to  have  high  tariff 
duties  placed  upon  the  sugar  and  molasses  imported  from  the  French 
sugar  islands.  Even  intercolonial  trade  was  hampered  by  heavy 
duties  on  the  importation  of  certain  goods  from  one  British  colony 
into  another.  Trade  flourished  despite  the  regulations.  In  the 
first  place,  not  only  the  Molasses  Act,  but  all  the  other  trade  laws 
went  unenforced  to  a  surprising  extent.  Smugglers  built  up  large 
fortunes,  and  suffered  no  lack  of  public  esteem  because  of  their  prac 
tices;  indeed,  they  were  often  the  leading  men  of  the  community. 

There  was,  too,  a  favorable  side  to  the  navigation  laws.  The 
enumerated  commodities,  which  could  be  shipped  only  to  Great 
The  favor-  Britain,  were  given  a  preference  in  that  market  over 
able  side  of  similar  commodities  from  other  countries.  This  was  a 
great  boon  to  the  Southerners,  whose  staple  products, 
such  as  sugar  and  tobacco,  were  on  the  favored  list;  nor  was  it  any 
hardship  to  the  Southerners  to  be  restricted  in  the  sale  of  these  products 
to  the  British  markets,  which  they  would  naturally  seek.  New 
Englanders,  with  no  staple  products  for  shipment,  could  not  share 
in  this  advantage,  but  there  was  a  source  of  profit  for  them  in  that 
their  ships  were  allowed  to  participate  in  the  monopoly  of  the  carrying 
trade  on  the  ocean  between  the  mother  country  and  the  colonies,  from 
which  the  ships  of  other  nations  were  excluded.  This  was  the  begin 
ning  of  the  extensive  shipping  industry  of  New  England.  The  hard 
ships  of  the  restrictions  on  buying  were  somewhat  reduced  by  the 
system  of  drawbacks  or  rebates,  by  which  the  duties  once  paid  in  the 
customs  houses  of  .Great  Britain  on  goods  bought  in  other  countries 
and  shipped  to  America  through  Great  Britain,  were  in  part  returned. 

Manufacturing,  save  as  carried  on  in  the  home,  made  no  headway 
in  the  colonies,  as  the  mother  country  never  intended  that  it  should. 
Manufac-  Great  Britain  in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century 
turing.  was  just  beginning  to  have  factories  of  her  own,  and  she 

proposed  to  see  no  rivals  to  these  spring  up  in  her  colonies.  To  encour- 


BRITISH  AMERICA  IN  1763  109 

age  the  exportation  from  America  of  raw  material  rather  than  of  manu 
factured  goods,  she  offered  bounties  on  such  American  products  as 
lumber,  tar,  turpentine,  and  hemp.  She  consciously  repressed  manu 
facturing  in  the  colonies  by  forbidding  the  exportation  thence  of  woolen 
goods  and  hats;  and  in  1750  Parliament  enacted  that  "no  mill  or  other 
engine  for  slitting  or  rolling  iron,  no  plating  forge  to  work  with  a  tilt 
hammer,  and  no  furnace  for  making  steel "  should  be  "  erected  in  any  of 
His  Majesty's  colonies  in  America."  This  was  a  blow  to  the  infant 
iron  industry  of  Pennsylvania  and  the  other  middle  colonies.  These 
acts  against  manufacturing  were  far  better  enforced  than  the  naviga 
tion  acts,  and  they  brought  it  about  that,  while  wool  and  iron  were 
abundant  in  America,  articles  manufactured  from  these  goods,  save 
those  made  in  private  houses,  were  generally  imported  from  Great 
Britain.  Colonial  manufacturing,  therefore,  consisting  mainly  of  such 
activities  as  blacksmithing,  spinning,  weaving,  dressing  of  leather,  shoe- 
making,  soap  and  candle  making,  and  carpentry,  was  strictly  domestic. 

COLONIAL   TOWNS 

The  life  of  the  colonial  towns  has  been  pictured  by  various  writers. 
Brissot  de  Warville,  a  French  traveler,  wrote  of  Boston  in  1788: 
"The  Bostonians  unite  simplicity  of  morals  with  that  B 
French  politeness  and  delicacy  of  manners  which  render 
virtue  more  amiable.  They  are  hospitable  to  strangers,  and  obliging 
to  friends.  ...  In  some  houses  you  hear  the  pianoforte.  .  .  . 
Neatness  is  seen  everywhere  in  Boston,  in  their  dress,  in  their  houses, 
and  in  their  churches.  Nothing  is  more  charming  than  an  inside  view  of 
the  church  on  Sunday.  The  good  cloth  coat  covers  the  man;  calicoes 
and  chintzes  dress  the  women  and  children.  .  .  .  Powder  and  poma 
tum  never  sully  the  heads  of  infants  and  children;  I  see  them  with 
pain,  however,  on  the  heads  of  the  men.  .  .  .  One  of  the  principal 
pleasures  of  the  inhabitants  of  these  towns  consists  of  little  parties  for 
the  country  among  families  and  friends.  The  principal  expence  of  the 
parties,  especially  after  dinner,  is  tea.  In  this,  as  in  their  whole  manner 
of  living,  the  Americans  in  general  resemble  the  English.  .  .  .  The  uni 
versity  certainly  contains  men  of  worth  and  learning;  but  science  is  not 
diffused  among  the  inhabitants  of  the  town.  Commerce  occupies  all 
their  ideas,  turns  all  their  heads,  and  absorbs  all  their  speculations." 

Andrew  Burnaby,  an  English  traveler,  thus  described  New  York: 
"The  city  is  situated  on  a  point  of  a  small  island.   .    .    .   The  streets 
are  paved  and  very  clean;  but  in  general  they  are  narrow;    New  York 
there  are  two  or  three  indeed,  which  are  spacious  and  airy, 
particularly  the  Broad  Way.     The  houses  in  this  street  have  most  of 


no 


THE  REVOLT  OF  THE  BRITISH  COLONIES 


NEW  YORK  HARBOR 

1.  The  Fort.  6.  Part  of  Nutten  Island. 

2.  The  Chappel  in  the  Fort.  7.  The  Crane. 

3.  The  Secretaries  Office.  8.  The  Lower  Market. 

4.  The  Great  Dock  With  a  Bridge  over  it.         9.  The  Great  Flesh  Market. 

5.  The  Ruines  of  White  Hall  Built  by  Governeur  Duncan. 

them  a  row  of  trees  before  them,  which  form  an  agreeable  shade  and 
produce  a  pretty  effect.  The  whole  length  of  the  town  is  something 
more  than  a  mile;  the  breadth  about  half  a  one.  .  .  .  The  inhab 
itants  .  .  .  being  however  of  different  nations,  different  languages, 
and  different  religions,  it  is  almost  impossible  to  give  them  any  precise 
or  determinate  character.  The  women  are  handsome  and  agreeable, 
though  rather  more  reserved  than  the  Philadelphia  ladies.  Their 
amusements  are  much  the  same  as  in  Pennsylvania,  viz:  balls  and 
sleighing  expeditions  in  the  winter;  and  in  the  summer,  going  in  parties 
on  the  water,  and  fishing;  or  making  excursions  in  the  country." 

Brissot  de  Warville  wrote  of  Philadelphia:  "Philadelphia  may  be 
considered  as  the  metropolis  of  the  United  States.  It  is  certainly 
the  finest  town  and  the  best  built;  it  is  the  most  healthy,  though  not 

-,. .,  the  most  luxurious.     You  may  find  here  more  men  of  in- 

.Pmlaaelpnia.  .  .  J 

formation,  more  political  and  literary  knowledge,  and 
more  learned  societies.  Many  towns  in  America  are  more  ancient, 
but  Philadelphia  has  surpassed  her  elders.  By  ten  o'clock  in  the 
evening  all  is  tranquill  in  the  streets;  the  profound  silence  which 
reigns  there  is  only  interrupted  by  the  voice  of  watchmen,  who  are  in 
small  numbers  and  form  the  only  patrol.  The  streets  are  lighted  by 
lamps,  placed  like  those  in  London.  On  the  sides  of  the  streets  are 
footways  of  brick,  and  gutters  constructed  of  brick  or  wood.  Strong 
posts  are  placed  to  prevent  carriages  from  passing  on  the  footways. 


BRITISH  AMERICA  IN  1763 


III 


IN  1717.    Redrawn  from  a  rare  print. 

10.  The  Dutch  Church. 

11.  The  English  Church. 

12.  The  City  Hall. 

13.  The  Exchange. 


14.  The  French  Church. 

15.  The  Upper  Market. 

1 6.  The  Station  Ship. 

17.  A  Wharf. 


All  the  streets  are  furnished  with  public  pumps,  in  great  number. 
At  the  door  of  each  house  are  placed  two  benches,  where  the 
family  sit  at  evening  to  take  the  fresh  air.  .  .  .  Philadelphia  is 
built  on  a  regular  plan;  long  and  large  streets  cross  each  other  at  right 
angles.  .  .  .  The  streets  are  not  inscribed  and  the  doors  are  not 
numbered.  .  .  .  The  women  wear  hats  and  caps  almost  as  varied  as 
those  of  Paris.  They  bestow  immense  expences  on  their  toilet  and 
head  dress.  .  .  .  The  Philadelphians  confine  not  their  attentions  to 
their  brethren;  they  extend  it  to  strangers;  they  have  formed  a 
society  for  the  assistance  of  immigrants,  who  arrive  from  Germany. 
A  similar  one  is  found  at  New  York,  called  the  Hibernian  Society, 
for  the  succor  of  immigrants  from  Ireland.  These  societies  inform 
themselves  of  the  arrival  of  a  ship,  of  the  situation  of  the  immigrants, 
and  procure  them  immediate  employment." 

EDUCATION  AND   RELIGION 

John  Adams  once  wrote  that  he  had  "an  overweaning  prejudice 
in  favor  of  New  England."  "The  public  institutions  in  New  England 
for  the  education  of  the  youth,"  he  went  on,  "supporting  The  progress 
colleges  at  the  public  expense  and  obliging  towns  to  of  education- 
maintain  grammar  schools  are  not  equaled,  and  never  were,  in  any 
part  of  the  world."  In  New  England  were  Harvard  College,  founded 
in  1636,  Yale  College  1701,  Rhode  Island  College  (Brown  University) 
1764,  and  Dartmouth  College  1769;  in  the  middle  colonies  were  King's 
College  (Columbia  University)  1754,  the  College  of  New  Jersey  (Prince- 


112 


THE  REVOLT  OF  THE  BRITISH  COLONIES 


ton  University)  1746,  Philadelphia  College  (University  of  Penn 
sylvania)  1749,  and  Queen's  College  (Rutgers  College)  1766;  and 
in  the  South  was  William  and  Mary  College,  1693.  The  middle 
colonies  possessed  public  schools,  though  these  were  not  general  here 
as  in  New  England;  in  the  southern  colonies  public  schools  were 
almost  unknown.  The  plantations  were  supplied  with  occasional 


HARVARD  COLLEGE,  1788 

private  schools,  but  these  were  poor  in  quality,  and  the  rich  planta 
tion  owners  usually  sent  their  sons  to  the  northern  colleges  or  to 
Europe  to  be  educated. 

The  first  book  printed  'n  the  English  colonies  was  the  "Bay  Psalm 
Book,"  published  in  Boston  in  1640:   the  first  newspaper,  the  News- 


CHAPTER   XII 
THE   RISE   OF   POLITICAL   DISCONTENT 

THE  NEW  REVENUE  LAWS 

DEFEAT  of  their  rivals  after  a  half  century  of  conflict,  giving  un 
disputed  possession   of   an   immensely  enlarged   territory,  stretching 
from  the  frozen  north  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  and  from 
the   West  Indies   to    the   Mississippi,  raised  new   prob-    pn  the  Brit- 
lems  and  led  the  British  statesmen  into  an  entirely  new    ^ht°* their 
method  of  dealing  with  the  colonies.     In  the  early  days 
of  the  seventeenth  century  it  was  a  great  experiment  in  the  world's 
history  for  one  nation  to  attempt  to  build  up  and  govern  a  frontier  in 
the  wilderness  thousands  of  miles  away  and  separated  from  the  home 
country  by  a  vast  ocean.     The  British  had  gone  into  the  e^eriment 
and  had  on  the  whole  succeeded  admirably,  as  their  prosperous  and 
rapidly   growing  colonies  of  the  eighteenth  century  proved.     Then, 
going  blindly  in  the  face  of  this  acknowledged  success,  they  adopted 
an  entirely  different  policy  and  lost  thirteen  of  their  most  promising 
colonies. 

The  British  statesmen  determined  to  centralize  the  control  of  the 
enlarged  empire  in  London  more  than  ever  before,  to  send  forth  to  the 
colonies  royal  officials   of  new  and  greater  powers,   to    The  new 
station  more  British  soldiers  in  the  different  parts  of  the    colonial 
empire,  and  in  the  Parliament  in  London  to  pass  more    poicy* 
stringent  colonial  laws;   all  despite  the  fact  that  the  colonists  them 
selves  preferred  to  have  things  continue  in  the  old  way,  without  new 
reminders  of  Great  Britain's  power  over  them.     Let  it  be  remembered 
that  Great  Britain  did  not  aim  her  new  legislation  at  the  "  thirteen 
colonies."     Had  any  one  at  the  time  spoken  of  the  "  thirteen  colonies," 
the  expression  would  have  conveyed  no  meaning,  for  no  one  would 
have  known  which  thirteen  colonies  were  meant.     Great  Britain  had 
more  than  twenty  colonies  in  America  and  her  new  policy  applied  to 
them  all,  to  Jamaica  and  Barbados  as  well  as  to  Massachusetts  and 
Virginia. 

To  maintain  the  new  empire  and  to  pay  the  heavy  indebtedness 
incurred  in  building  it  up,  which  had  doubled  in  a  few  years  and  by 

117 


n8  THE  REVOLT  OF  THE  BRITISH  COLONIES 

1763  amounted  to  £140,000,000,  additional  revenue  was  imperative. 
More  ri  'd  As  a  first  step,  it  was  decided,  even  before  the  last  war 
enforcement  with  the  French  was  concluded,  to  attempt  the  rigid  en- 
gation?awi~  forcement  of  the  existing  navigation  or  tariff  laws,  and 
thus  compel  the  Americans  to  pay  a  share  of  the  new  bur 
dens.  The  common  disregard  of  these  regulations  found  especially 
flagrant  expression  in  the  unpatriotic  course  of  merchants  who  traded 
with  the  fleets  and  garrisons  of  the  French  even  while  hostilities  were  in 
progress.  To  stop  the  practice  the  courts  issued  writs  of  assistance, 
which  were  general  search  warrants,  authorizing  the  customs  officials 
to  search  any  house  or  building  whatsoever  at  any  time  for  smuggled 
goods.  James  Otis,  a  lawyer  of  Boston,  in  an  impassioned  argument 
before  the  courts  against  the  writs,  voiced  the  opposition  of  the  colo 
nists:  "  It  appears  to  me  the  worst  instrument  of  arbitrary  power  .  .  . 
that  ever  was  found  upon  an  English  law  book.  .  .  .  One  of  the  most 
essential  branches  of  English  liberty  is  the  freedom  of  one's  house.  A 
man's  house  is  his  castle,  and  whilst  he  is  quiet,  he  is  as  well  guarded 
as  a  prince  in  his  castle.  .  .  .  What  a  scene  does  this  open!  Every 
man,  prompted  by  revenge,  ill  humor  or  wantonness,  to  inspect  the 
inside  of  his  neighbor's  house,  may  get  a  writ  of  assistance."  The 
writs  had  frequently  been  employed  in  England  and  occasionally 
in  the  colonies,  and  Otis  lost  the  case. 

Secondly,  to  increase  the  revenue  from  America,  the  Molasses 
Act  of  1733  was  succeeded  by  the  Sugar  Act  of  1764,  which  reduced 

the  old  duty  on  molasses  by  one-half,  and  placed  new 
A  new  tariff         ,      .  „  .  :  .,,       ' 

law,  the  duties  on  coffee,  pimento,  wines,  silks,  linens,  and  sugar. 

Strict  measures  were  taken  to  enforce  the  law.  All 
officers  and  even  common  sailors  on  ships  of  war  were 
authorized  to  assist  the  regular  revenue  officials  in  the  suppression  of 
smuggling,  and  all  offenders  were  to  be  tried,  not  in  the  ordinary 
courts  of  law,  but  in  the  admiralty  courts  without  a  jury.  The 
amount  of  revenue  accruing  was  not  materially  increased,  whilst  an 
undesirable  spirit  of  resentment  against  the  mother  country  was 
aroused,  especially  in  commercial  New  England. 

The  Sugar  Act  was  a  part  of  the  new  financial  policy  of  the  Prime 
Minister,  George  Grenville,  the  head  of  the  British  Cabinet.  At  his 
The  stamp  advice,  too,  Parliament  passed  the  Stamp  Act  of  1765, 
tax>  which  the  British  historian  Lecky  has  characterized  as 

"one  of  the  most  momentous  legislative  acts  in  the  history  of  mankind." 
This  latter  act  required  the  Americans  to  place  stamps,  which  were  to 
be  purchased  from  the  government,  upon  legal  documents  of  various 
kinds,  upon  newspapers,  pamphlets,  almanacs,  playing  cards,  and 


THE  RISE  OF  POLITICAL  DISCONTENT 


119 


BRITISH  STAMP 


many  other  articles.  The  tax  on  wills  was  to  be  five  shillings;  on  every 
pack  of  playing  cards  purchased,  one  shilling;  on  every  advertisement 
in  the  newspapers,  two  shillings;  and  on  every  almanac  two  pence. 
Such  a  tax  was  simple  and  direct,  and  it  was 
thought  that  it  would  be  easily  and  cheaply  col 
lected;  evasion  would  be  difficult;  and  it  was 
confidently  predicted  that  the  sale  of  the  stamps 
would  yield  a  revenue  of  many  thousand  pounds 
per  year.  The  promise  was  given  to  the  colonies 
by  the  British  government  that  the  first  revenue 
secured  from  the  sale  of  the  stamps  would  be 
expended  for  the  immediate  purpose  of  putting 
down  the  conspiracy  of  Pontiac,  an  uprising  of 
the  Indians  west  of  the  Alleghanies,  and  that 
under  no  circumstances  would  any  portion  of 
the  money  be  expended  outside  of  America. 

Massachusetts  had  levied  such  a  tax  upon  herself  in  1755,  Great 
Britain  collected  such  a  tax  at  home,  and  taxes  of  the  same  nature 

are  now  collected  in  the  United  States;  but  the  Americans 

n  ~ii  i  •  1-1  Attitude  of 

of  1765  flatly  retused  to  have  anything  to  do  with  a  tax    the  colonies 

imposed  on  them  by  the  British.  In  New  York  a  con 
gress  of  nine  mainland  colonies,  called  the  Stamp  Act 
Congress,  came  together  to  plan  systematic  opposition.  While  pro 
fessing  "all  due  subordination  to  that  august  body,  the  Parliament 
of  Great  Britain,"  the  Congress  maintained  "that  it  is  inseparably 
essential  to  the  freedom  of  a  free  people,  and  the  undoubted  right  of 
Englishmen,  that  no  taxes  be  imposed  upon  them  but  with  their  own 
consent,  given  personally  or  by  their  representatives,"  and  that  the 
colonies  "are  not  and  from  their  local  circumstances  cannot  be  repre 
sented  in  the  House  of  Commons  of  Great  Britain."  The  distributor 
of  the  new  stamps  in  Boston  was  hanged  in  effigy  from  a  tree  in  the 
main  street  of  the  town,  the  stamp  office  torn  down,  and  the  home  of 
Chief  Justice  Hutchinson  sacked.  In  New  York  the  effigy  of  the 
governor  of  the  colony  was  paraded  around  the  town  and  then  burned. 
On  the  day  when  the  act  was  to  go  into  effect,  flags  were  hung  at  half- 
mast,  shops  were  closed,  bells  were  tolled,  and  copies  of  the  Stamp 
Act  were  hawked  about  the  streets  bearing  the  inscription,  "The 
folly  of  England  and  the  ruin  of  America." 

Few  stamps  were  sold.     Merchants,  to  express  their  resentment 
to  the  mother  Country,  ceased  importations  from  Britain,    The  repeai 
until  finally,  at  the  wish  of  the  British  commercial  classes,    of  the  stamp 
who  feared  the  loss  of  the  entire  American  trade  if  the  colo- 


toward  the 
stamp  tax. 


tax. 


120  THE  REVOLT  OF  THE  BRITISH  COLONIES 

nies  were  further  exasperated,  the  act  was  repealed.  Accompanying 
the  Repeal  Act,  however,  was  the  Declaratory  Act,  to  the  effect  that 
Great  Britain  had  full  power  to  make  laws  "  to  bind  the  colonies  and 
people  of  America,  subjects  of  the  Crown  of  Great  Britain,  in  all  cases 
whatsoever." 

British  and  American  views  in  regard  to  the  respective  rights  of 
colony  and  mother  country,  of  King  and  Parliament,  were  now  in 
Constitutional  violent  collision.  The  Americans  contended  that  Par- 
arguments.  Hament,  even  if  it  had  come  to  exercise  the  royal  power 
in  Great  Britain,  had  not  the  same  jurisdiction  over  the  colonies  as 
had  the  Crown,  which  in  the  beginning  had  granted  the  charters.  In 
certain  of  these  charters  "the  rights  of  Englishmen"  were  definitely 
guaranteed  to  the  colonists.  No  one  at  all  conversant  with  English 
history  could  deny  that  one  of  the  dearest  rights  of  Englishmen  was 
to  vote  their  own  taxes.  On  this  point  the  Americans  made  a  distinc 
tion  between  internal  and  external  taxes.  Theoretically  they  did  not 
consider  that  it  was  contrary  to  the  rights  of  Englishmen  for  the 
mother  country  to  regulate  the  foreign  trade  of  the  colonies  by  tariff 
taxes,  although,  as  has  been  seen,  they  inconsistently  evaded  their  pay 
ment.  Internal  taxes,  however,  collected  not  for  the  sake  of  regulating 
commerce  but  primarily  to  raise  revenue  to  pay  the  expenses  of  the 
government,  were  a  different  matter.  It  was  their  undoubted  right 
as  Englishmen,  the  Americans  claimed,  to  have  a  voice  in  the  imposi 
tion  of  such  taxes,  and  without  their  consent  the  taxes  would  be  void. 

It  was  sheer  nonsense  to  hold  up  to  the  Americans  in  the  crisis 
the  British  theory  that  every  member  of  the  House  of  Commons 

represented  in  that  body  every  subject  in  the  kingdom, 
British  and  4.1      Jl      A          •  •  r  Ai_ 

American          and  that  consequently  the  Americans,  as  members  of  the 

resentationP~  British  empire,  were  represented  in  the  Parliament  in 
London.  The  British  and  the  American  views  of  repre 
sentation  were  quite  different,  and  just  here  was  a  source  of  misunder 
standing.  The  Americans  were  in  the  habit  of  apportioning  their 
representatives  in  their  several  colonial  legislatures  according  to 
population,  and  changing  the  number  and  size  of  the  districts  as 
population  changed;  each  district  in  America,  moreover,  elected  its 
representative  from  among  its  own  residents.  The  British,  on  the 
other  hand,  did  not  change  their  apportionment  of  representatives  as 
population  changed,  and  hence  with  the  century-old  division  of  dis 
tricts  new  centers  of  population,  such  as  the  manufacturing  cities  of 
Manchester  and  Sheffield  for  example,  were  often  without  an  elected 
representative  of  their  own.  A  member  elected  to  the  House  of 
Commons  from  any  district  was  not  necessarily  a  resident  of  that 


THE  RISE  OF  POLITICAL  DISCONTENT  121 

district  but  might  hail  from  any  section  of  the  kingdom.  The  Ameri 
cans,  knowing  that  they  elected  no  representative  to  the  British 
Parliament  and  that  none  left  their  shores  to  attend  the  meetings  of  that 
body,  could  well  claim,  from  their  point  of  view,  that  they  were  unrepre 
sented  in  the  law-making  body  in  London,  and  they  failed  to  accept 
the  British  explanation  that  as  members  of  the  empire  they  were 
represented  by  all  the  members  of  the  House  of  Commons. 

In  justification  of  the  British  taxation  of  America  was  the  course 
of  Spain,  which  derived  large  revenues  from  her  American  possessions. 

She  exacted  from  her  American  subjects  a  poll  tax,  a  tax    , 

.  J  The  colonial 

on  sales,  import  and  export  taxes,  a  convoy  tax,  a  tax  on    taxes  of 

the  sale  of  offices  and  on  the  sale  of  indulgences,  and  re- 

ceived  the  entire  income  from  the  state  monopolies  of  the 

sale  of  gunpowder,  salt,  tobacco,  and  quicksilver.  From  these  sources  and 

from  the  mines  Spain  in  the  year  1796  derived  from  America  a  revenue 

of  $16,000,000.  France  also  imposed  taxes  on  her  American  possessions. 

Pitt,  who  had  carried  his  country  triumphantly  through  the  French 
and  Indian  War,  stood  firmly  for  the  rights  of  the  Americans.  "I 
rejoice  that  America  has  resisted,"  he  said  in  the  debate  British  sym- 
over  the  repeal  of  the  stamp  tax.  "  Three  millions  of  pathy  for  the 
people  so  dead  to  all  the  feelings  of  liberty,  as  volun 
tarily  to  submit  to  be  slaves,  would  have  been  fit  instruments  to 
make  slaves  of  the  rest.  .  .  .  The  gentleman  tells  us  of  many  who 
are  taxed  and  are  not  represented.  .  .  .  But  they  are  all  inhabit 
ants,  and,  as  such,  are  they  not  virtually  represented?  ...  If 
the  gentleman  does  not  understand  the  difference  between  external  and 
internal  taxes,  I  cannot  help  it;  but  there  is  a  plain  distinction  between 
taxes  levied  for  the  purpose  of  raising  a  revenue,  and  duties  imposed 
for  the  regulation  of  trade,  for  the  accommodation  of  the  subject. 
.  .  .  America,  if  she  fell,  would  fall  like  the  strong  man.  She  would 
embrace  the  pillars  of  the  state,  and  pull  down  the  constitution  along 
with  her."  He  urged  that  continued  peaceful  trade  with  America  was 
of  more  value  to  the  British  people  than  the  pittance  that  could  be 
obtained  by  taxation.  Burke,  Conway,  and  Barre  held  the  same 
views,  and  in  general  the  Whig  party  opposed  the  stamp  tax  and  all 
the  oppressive  policies  of  the  government  in  American  administration. 

Though  the  Whigs  were  the  party  that  had  waged  successfully  the 
French  and  Indian  War,  George  III,  upon  his  accession  to  the  throne 
toward  the  close  of  that  war,  forced  their  leaders  out  of    The  arbitrary 
office   and   gathered  about  him   the   "King's   Friends,"    course  of 
who  were  mainly  members  of  the  Tory  party.     Under    Geor&eIIL 
the  two  preceding  monarchs,   George  I  and   George  II,  who  were 


122  THE  REVOLT  OF  THE  BRITISH  COLONIES 

thoroughgoing  Germans,  caring  little  for  England  and  hardly  able  to 
speak  the  English  language,  the  prestige  of  the  Crown  had  waned  fast, 
and  the  cabinet,  the  meetings  of  which  the  King  rarely  attended,  had 

come  to  exercise  the  royal 
prerogatives.  George  III 
was  English  in  his  educa 
tion,  a  man  of  tremendous 
will  power  and  energy, 
though  not  of  great  intel 
lectual  ability.  When  as 
a  youth  of  twenty-two  he 
was  crowned  in  1760,  his 
mother,  with  sorrowful  ref 
erence  to  the  low  estate  to 
which  the  royal  power  had 

\  /'        f  H^^l^         ' ^ /  fallen,    admonished    him, 

\f^  "George,   be   King!"   and 

under    the    inspiration    of 

\  ^"*  this  admonition,  George  set 

'v'vN£~  out  to  win  back  the  lost 

GEORGE  m  powers  and  to  be  "  every 

After  a  portrait  by  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds.  inch  a  King."      He  insisted 

on   ministers    of   his   own 

choice,  though  they  did  not  enjoy  the  confidence  of  the  House  of  Com 
mons,  and  he  resorted  to  bribery  and  corruption  to  push  his  measures 
through  Parliament. 

Under  the  leadership  in  the  House  of  Commons  of  Charles  Town- 
shend,  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  Great  Britain  turned  to  new  tariff 

taxes  in  1767,  and  by  the  To wnshend  Acts  added  tea,  glass, 
taxes.  The  lead,  paper,  and  a  few  other  things  to  the  list  of  articles 
ActsnoSfhi767  uPon  which  the  Americans  were  to  pay  an  import  tax. 

It  was  more  than  a  regulation  of  commerce;  it  was  a 
revenue  measure,  the  income  from  which  was  to  be  used  to  pay  the 
salaries  of  the  colonial  judges  and  governors,  and  thus  free  these 
officials  from  the  control  exercised  over  them  by  the  colonial  legis 
latures.  Parliament  at  the  same  time  provided  that  the  legislature 
of  New  York  should  be  suspended  from  sitting  for  refusing  to  make 
provision  for  the  British  regulars,  who  were  sent  to  the  colonies  in 
accordance  with  the  Quartering  Act  of  1765.  This  action  brought 
up  the  question  whether  or  not  Parliament  could  break  up  a  colonial 
legislature.  The  further  order  that,  while  the  colony  remained  obdu 
rate,  the  governor  of  New  York  should  give  his  assent  to  no  laws 


THE  RISE  OF  POLITICAL  DISCONTENT  123 

passed  in  that  colony,  raised  the  question  whether  or  not  it  was  the 
business  of  Parliament  to  interfere  with  the  local  laws  passed  by  the 
Americans  for  themselves.  Parliament  also  legalized  writs  of  assistance, 
and  sent  to  America  many  new  crown  officials  to  secure  strict  enforce 
ment  of  the  additional  duties. 

The  Americans  met  the  new  tariff  duties  by  non-importation  societies 
in  an  effort  to  boycott  all  British  goods.    In  one  year  import-  The  opposi- 
ations  from  Great  Britain  fell  off  one-half,  and  in  three  years   Jjjg^jj16 
only   £16,000   of    revenue  were   collected,   which  it   cost 
£200,000  to  collect.    Stamp  taxes  and  tariff  taxes,  internal  and  external 
taxes,  were  thus  alike  objectionable;  in  the  heat  of  resentment  the  dis 
tinction  between  the  two  kinds  of  taxes  was  disregarded. 

In  the  discussion  following  the  enactment  of  the  Townshend  Acts, 
there  appeared  in  a  Philadelphia  newspaper  a  series  of  essays  entitled 
"Letters  from  a  Farmer  in  Pennsylvania  to  the  Inhabit- 
ants  of  the  British  Colonies,"  which  had  a  wide  influence,  inson's 
The  author  was  John  Dickinson,  who  had  written  the 
resolutions  of  the  Stamp  Act  Congress  and  was  soon  to  be 
known  as  one  of  the  foremost  political  writers  in  America.  He  did  not 
argue  for  independence,  but  said:  "Let  these  truths  be  indelibly 
impressed  upon  our  minds:  that  we  cannot  be  happy  without  being 
free;  that  we  cannot  be  free  without  being  secure  in  our  property;  that 
we  cannot  be  secure  in  our  property,  if,  without  our  consent,  others 
may,  as  by  right,  take  it  away;  that  taxes  imposed  on  us  by  Parliament, 
do  thus  take  it  away." 

By  virtue  of  the  Quartering  Act  passed  in  1765,  for  refusal  to  obey 
which  the  New  York  legislature  was  suspended,  the  colonies  were 
required  to  provide  for  the  accommodation  of  British  The  Boston 
regulars,  who  were  to  be  sent  to  America  in  greater  num-  Massacre, 
bers  than  formerly  to  defend  the  enlarged  empire.  Late  in  1768  the 
King  sent  two  regiments  to  Boston,  where  their  presence  soon  caused 
the  trouble  which  might  have  been  expected.  On  the  night  of  the  fifth 
of  March,  1770,  after  a  false  alarm  of  fire  had  called  together  a  large 
concourse  of  people,  a  crowd  of  men  and  boys  began  to  harass  and 
insult  a  handful  of  red-coated  soldiers  on  guard  in  one  of  the  prin 
cipal  streets,  calling  out,  "Rascals!"  "Lobsters!"  and  such  epithets, 
and  hurling  snowballs,  stones,  and  other  missiles  at  them,  until  the 
soldiers  opened  fire  in  self-defense.  Five  of  the  mob  were  killed  and 
six  wounded.  Though  the  troops  were  speedily  removed  from  the 
town  to  an  island  in  the  harbor,  the  damage  had  been  done;  the  con 
ciliating  removal  came  too  late,  and  the  Americans  were  provided 
with  another  grievance. 


I24 


THE  REVOLT  OF  THE  BRITISH  COLONIES 


The  soldiers  who  fired  the  shots  were  tried  for  their  lives  in  the 

courts  of  Massachusetts,  and  after  a  fair  trial  all  were  acquitted  with 

The  trial  of       the  exception  of  two,  who  were  found  guilty  of  man- 

e  soldiers.      siaughter    and    lightly    punished.     The    efforts    of   two 

prominent  colonial  lawyers,  John  Adams  and  Josiah  Quincy,  in  behalf 


THE  BOSTON  MASSACRE 
By  Paul  Revere. 

of  the  accused,  and  the  conservative  verdict  of  the  jury  were  evidence 
that  the  Americans  as  a  whole  were  fair-minded  and  not  bloodthirsty. 
The  massacre  in  Boston  was  followed  by  a  period  of  excited  public 
discussion,  which  afforded  to  the  fertile  genius  of  Samuel  Adams 
Committees  opportunity  to  put  into  operation  a  bold  experiment, 
of  corres-  By  his  suggestion  the  various  towns  of  Massachusetts 
appointed  committees  of  correspondence  to  carry  on  dis 
cussion  from  one  end  of  the  colony  to  the  other,  to  keep  every  part 
informed  of  the  state  of  public  sentiment  in  every  other  part,  in  short, 
to  continue  the  agitation.  Somewhat  later  a  new  wave  of  excitement 
swept  over  the  colonies,  following  an  attempt  on  the  part  of  Great 
Britain  to  apprehend  and  punish  the  ring-leaders  of  a  mob  in  Providence. 


THE  RISE  OF  POLITICAL  DISCONTENT  125 

Rhode  Island,  which  had  burned  to  the  water's  edge  the  Gaspee,  a 
vessel  of  the  royal  navy  engaged  in  suppressing  smuggling;  and  when, 
in  the  outburst,  Virginia  suggested  committees  of  correspondence 
among  the  different  colonies,  the  plan  was  adopted  and  proved  unex 
pectedly  effective  in  binding  the  colonies  together. 

The  non-importation  societies,  by  bringing  about  a  reduction  in 
the  amount  of  British  goods  sold  in  America,  again  induced  Great 
Britain  to  change  her  laws,  until  a  tax  on  tea  was  all  The  tariff  on 
that  was  left  of  the  objectionable  tariff,  and  this  was  only  tea- 
threepence  on  the  pound.  In  fact,  tea  could  be  bought  more  cheaply 
in  America  than  in  England;  but  the  principle  of  taxation  without 
representation  was  involved,  and  on  this  point  the  Americans  would 
not  yield. 

When  a  consignment  of  tea  arrived  in  Boston  harbor,  citizens  of 
Cambridge,  Brookline,  Roxbury,  Dorchester,  Charlestown,  and  Boston 
joined  in  a  mass  meeting,  which  voted  unanimously  that  The  Boston 
the  tea  be  taken  back  to  England.  When  more  than  two  Tea  Party- 
weeks  had  passed  and  the  tea  ships  still  lay  at  the  wharf,  a  large  town 
meeting  came  together  in  Old  South  Meetinghouse  in  Boston,  and 
demanded  that  the  governor  order  the  tea  to  be  taken  away.  While 
the  crowd  was  waiting  for  his  answer,  a  voice  called  out,  amid  applause, 
"Who  knows  how  tea  will  mingle  with  salt  water?"  The  governor 
sent  his  refusal,  and  Samuel  Adams  rose  and  announced  to  his  assembled 
fellow-citizens,  "This  meeting  can  do  nothing  more  to  save  the  coun 
try."  A  shout  of  fifty  passing  "Indians"  was  heard  outside  the  door, 
and  the  crowd  filed  out  of  the  meetinghouse  to  the  wharf  and  stood  in 
silence  for  three  hours  in  the  darkness  of  the  night,  while  the  "Indians" 
pitched  the  three  hundred  and  forty  chests  of  tea  into  the  ocean  in  the 
famous  Boston  Tea  Party.  So  still  was  the  crowd  that  the  click  of 
the  hatchets  was  distinctly  heard  by  those  on  shore.  The  date  was 
nine  days  before  Christmas,  1773.  Said  an  English  writer,  upon  hearing 
of  the  occurrence,  "Beware,  little  town,  count  the  cost,  and  know  well 
if  you  dare  to  defy  the  wrath  of  Great  Britain,  and  if  you  love  exile,  and 
poverty,  and  death  rather  than  submission."  At  New  York  and 
Philadelphia  also  the  hated  cargo  of  the  tea  ships  was  not  allowed  to 
be  landed.  Taxation  without  representation  was  a  failure  in  America. 

THE    INTOLERABLE    ACTS 

"The  town  of  Boston,"  said  one  member  of  the  British  Parliament, 
"ought  to  be  knocked  about  the  ears  and  destroyed.  You  will  never 
meet  with  proper  obedience  of  the  laws  till  you  have  destroyed 


126  THE  REVOLT  OF  THE  BRITISH  COLONIES 

that  nest  of  locusts."  Under  the  leadership  of  Lord  North,  who  was 
The  five  now  Prime  Minister,  Parliament  in  1774  passed  three 

Intolerable  coercive  acts:  first,  the  Boston  Port  Bill,  by  which  the 
port  of  Boston  was  closed  to  commerce  and  the  custom 
house  located  at  Salem,  till  Boston  paid  for  the  tea  which  had  been 
destroyed  and  gave  promise  of  good  behavior  in  the  future;  second, 
the  Massachusetts  Government  Act,  remodeling  the  charter  of  Massa 
chusetts  and  ordering  that  the  upper  house  of  the  legislature,  till  then 
elected  by  the  lower  house,  be  appointed  by  the  King,  that  the  judges 
and  sheriffs  be  appointed  by  the  governor,  that  the  jurymen  be  selected 
by  the  sheriffs  and  no  longer  by  the  people,  and  that  the  powers  of  the 
town  meeting  be  curtailed;  and  third,  the  Administration  of  Justice 
Act,  providing  that  if  murder  was  committed  in  Massachusetts  and  the 
governor  deemed  that  the  crime  had  been  committed  in  aiding  the 
magistrates  to  put  down  riot  and  insurrection  and  that  a  fair  trial 
could  not  be  had  in  the  province,  the  accused  might  be  taken  to  another 
province  or  to  Great  Britain  for  trial.  These  three  coercive  measures 
of  1774  were  aimed  at  Massachusetts  alone.  Two  other  "  Intolerable 
Acts"  were  passed  by  Parliament  at  the  same  time.  One  reenacted 
the  Quartering  Act  of  1765,  and  the  other  concerned  the  government 
of  the  new  colony  of  Quebec,  won  from  France  in  1763. 

This  latter,  or  Quebec  Act,  provided  for  an  arbitrary  form  of  govern 
ment  for  that  colony,  with  restricted  right  of  trial  by  jury,  no  popular 
The  Quebec  law-making,  and  with  the  Roman  Catholic  religion  prac- 
Act.  /  7  if  tically  set  up  as  the  state  religion  of  the  province.  When 
it  was  known  that  the  limits  of  Quebec,  under  such  principles  of 
government,  were  extended  south  and  west  to  the  Ohio,  where  Massa 
chusetts,  Connecticut,  New  York,  and  Virginia  had  claims  to  the  land, 
there  was  an  outburst  of  indignation. 

The  rapid  succession  of  events  could  have  but  one  meaning,  the 
mother  country  and  her  colonies  did  not  understand  one  another. 
A  crisis  was  at  hand. 

Massachusetts  and  her  sister  colonies  acted  together  with  wonderful 
unanimity.  That  the  people  of  persecuted  Boston  might  not  suffer, 
loads  of  supplies  were  poured  in  on  the  town  from  every 
tcfstricken  quarter,  from  far-away  Maryland,  Virginia,  and  South 
Massachu-  Carolina,  as  well  as  from  the  near-by  towns.  The  mer 
chants  of  Salem  and  Marblehead  gave  to  their  Boston 
neighbors  the  free  use  of  their  wharves  and  warehouses.  The  first 
day  of  June,  1774,  when  the  new  coercive  acts  were  to  go  into  effect, 
was  generally  observed  as  a  day  of  fasting  and  prayer. 

Still  more  remarkable  was  the  cooperation  of  twelve  continental 


THE 

THIRTEEN  AMERICAN  COLONIES 

IN  1775 

Scale  of  Miles 


I.       I  Extent  of  Settlement 
• Proclamation  Line,  1763 

l 1 


THE  RISE  OF  POLITICAL  DISCONTENT  127 

colonies  in  sending  representatives  to  Philadelphia  to  discuss  the 
situation  and  if  possible  devise  a  plan  of  common  action,  The  yirst 
in  what  came  to  be  known  as  the  First  Continental  Con-  Continental 
gress.  The  call  for  this  Congress  was  issued  by  the  legis 
lature  of  Massachusetts,  on  the  motion  of  Samuel  Adams.  aA 
meeting  of  committees,  from  the  several  colonies  on  this  continent  is 
highly,  expedient  and  necessary,"  ran  the  call,  "to  consult  upon  the 
present  state  of  the  colonies,  and  the  miseries,  to  which  they  are,  and 
must  be  reduced,  by  the  operation  of  certain  acts  of  Parliament  respect 
ing  America;  and  to  deliberate  and  determine  upon  wise  and  proper 
measures  to  be  by  them  recommended  to  all  the  colonies,  for  the 
recovering  and  establishment  of  their  just  rights  and  liberties,  civil 
and  religious,  and  the  restoration  of  union  and  harmony  between 
Great  Britain  and  the  colonies,  most  ardently  desired  by  all  men." 
Common  danger  was  driving  the  different  colonies  together,  for  it  was 
felt  that  if  the  Parliament  of  Great  Britain  could  thus  lightly  disregard 
the  charter  of  Massachusetts,  no  one  could  tell  on  what  other  part  of 
the  country  the  next  blow  would  fall.  Massachusetts  sent  John  Adams 
and  Samuel  Adams  to  the  Congress,  Delaware  sent  John  Dickinson,  and 
Virginia  Richard  Henry  Lee,  Patrick  Henry,  and  George  Washington. 
The  more  or  less  united  action  of  the  colonies  of  the  mainland  on  pre 
vious  occasions  partially  explains  the  success  of  the  new  movement.  ^ 
There  had  been  the  New  England  Confederation  of  four  colonies  in  the" 
middle  of  the  seventeenth  century,  the  gathering  in  New  York  in  1690 
to  confer  in  regard  to  defense  against  the  French  and  Indians,  the 
Albany  congress  of  1754,  the  Stamp  Act  Congress  of  1765,  and  the 
committees  of  correspondence. 

The  First  Continental  Congress  of    1774  was  outwardly  a  loyal 
body  with  no  revolutionary  tendencies  apparent,  but  it  nevertheless 
strenuously  objected   to   the    newly    adopted    policy    of 
Great  Britain..    It  expressed  sympathy  for  the  town  of    Of  the° JCon- 
Boston,   and  adopted   the  so-called  Association,   which,    tinental 
so  far  as  the  use  of  British  goods  and  the  shipment  to 
Britain  of  American  goods  were  concerned,  was  "a  non-importation, 
non-consumption,  and  non-exportation  agreement."     Effort  was  made 
to  increase  the  effectiveness  of  the  boycott  of  British  goods  by  the 
appointment  in  every  county,  city,  and  town,  of  those  "whose  business 
it  shall  be  attentively  to  observe  the  conduct  of  all  persons  touching 
this  Association";  and  these  local  committees  were  directed  to  publish 
the  names  of  all  who  refused  to  carry  out  the  terms  of  the  boycott. 

The  Congress  which  took  this  firm  stand  'differed  from  the  pres 
ent  law-making  Congress  of  the  United  States,  for  the  votes  of  the 


128 


THE  REVOLT  OF  THE  BRITISH  COLONIES 


members  from  any  one  colony  could  be  controlled  by  the  revolutionary 
assemblies,  conventions,  and  committees  that  appointed  them.  It 
had  no  power  to  carry  out  its  acts,  but  depended  on  public  opinion  for 
their  enforcement. 

OPENING  ACTS  OF  WAR 

The  governor  of  Massachusetts  under  Great  Britain's  new  method  of 

administering  the  colony  was  General  Gage.     When  he  summoned  the 

legislature  to  meet  in  Salem,  whither    he  had  removed 

settsfund'er       the  capital  of  the  colony  from  Boston,  and  then  withdrew 

her  changed      ^G  cafi   that  body  met  in  spite  of  him,  and  as  a  professed 

government.  ;  '    ,  . 

revolutionary  body  assumed  control  ol  tne  colony  outside 

the  territory  in  and  around  Boston,  which  was  in  the  hands  of  British 
soldiers.  The  people  were  invited  to  pay  taxes  to  the  revolutionary 
government  and  to  organize  local  militia  companies  and  committees  of 
safety,  which  they  proceeded  to 
do.  Affairs  in  Massachusetts  were 
rapidly  taking  on  a  martial  aspect. 
Within  less  than  a  year  the 
presence  of  the  British  regulars 

led  to  a  rupture  which 
The  battle  .    ,       f  ,    . , 

of  Concord       went  far  beyond  the 

and  Lexing-      Boston  massacre  both 
ton.  .      .  .  ,    . 

in  immediate  and  in 

permanent  results.  The  thousands 
of  royal  troops  in  Boston  were 
matched  by  a  large  body  of  native 
militia  or  minutemen,  recruited 
from  the  inhabitants  of  the  sur 
rounding  towns,  ready  to  be  on 
the  march  at  a  minute's  notice 
against  any  hostile  demonstration 
on  the  part  of  the  British.  A 
warning  came  in  the  early  morn 
ing  of  the  nineteenth  of  April, 
1775,  when  Paul  Revere  galloped 
through  the  countryside  from  Bos 
ton  to  Lexington  and  Concord  and 
roused  the  inhabitants  with  the 
news,  "The  British  are  coming!" 
So  they  were,  eight  hundred  strong,  with  orders  to  destroy  the  mili 
tary  stores  of  the  patriots  in  Concord  and  to  arrest  two  of  the  patriot 


THE  MINUTE  MAN 

From  the  statue  at  Concord  by  Daniel  C.  French. 
Photograph  copyright  Detroit  Publishing  Co. 


THE  RISE  OF  POLITICAL  DISCONTENT  129 

leaders,  Samuel  Adams  and  John  Hancock,  for  treason.  In  a  few 
hours  the  redcoats  drew  up  on  Lexington  green,  confronted  by  fifty 
minutemen  under  Captain  Parker.  No  one  knows  who  fired  the 
first  shot.  The  Americans  claimed  that  this  responsibility  belonged 
to  the  British  commander,  Major  Pitcairn,  who  shouted,  "  Disperse, 
ye  villains!"  and  then  gave  the  order  to  fire,  while  the  British  de 
clared  that  the  first  shots  came  from  rebels  hidden  behind  stone 
walls.  Eight  of  the  minutemen  were  killed  and  ten  wounded.  The 
British  column  moved  on  to  Concord  to  destroy  the  stores  there, 
but  found  that  most  of  these  had  been  removed  to  places  of  safety 
before  their  arrival.  Adams  and  Hancock  escaped.  Then  the  British 
had  to  run  the  gauntlet  back  to  Boston  between  little  squads  of  the 
hostile  farmers  peppering  away  at  them  as  they  passed,  from  behind 
stone  walls  and  trees.  It  was  a  nightmare  of  a  retreat,  and  despite 
their  reinforcements  from  Boston,  ended  in  a  loss  for  the  British  of  two 
hundred  and  seventy-three  killed,  wounded,  and  captured.  The  loss 
of  the  Americans  was  ninety-three. 

The  news  of  the  fighting  spread  rapidly.     Men  from  twenty-three 
towns  joined  in  the  fight  before  it  was  over,  one  company  marching  six 
teen  miles  in  four  hours.     Patriot  leaders  came  from  all 
New  England.     Colonel  Israel  Putnam  on  horseback  cov-    spread  of  the 
ered  the  distance  of  one  hundred  miles  from  his  home  in    {J|wfe0f the 
Connecticut    to    Boston    in    eighteen   hours.      Benedict 
Arnold  arrived  from  Connecticut,  and  John  Stark  from  New  Hampshire. 
The  outbreak  took  place  on  Wednesday,  and  by  Saturday  night  the 
British  were  besieged  in  Boston  by  18,000  Americans. 

The  victorious  and  excited  Americans  took  the  offensive  by  dispatch 
ing  an  expedition  against  the  forts  of  Ticonderoga  and  Crown  Point 
on  Lake  Champlain.     The  Green  Mountain  Boys  of  Ver 
mont,  under  Ethan  Allen  and  Seth  Warner,  led  the  attack,    Of  Ticonde?- 

and  three  weeks  after  Concord  and  Lexington,  on  May  10,    °ga  andn  . 

J        7     Crown  Point, 
the  two  fortresses  surrendered.     The  captured  stores  of 

two  hundred  cannon  and  large  supplies  of  powder  and  ball  proved  of 
immense  value  to  the  patriot  cause. 

Meanwhile  the  siege  of  Boston  continued.  On  the  night  of  June 
16,  1775,  Colonel  William  Prescott,  with  twelve  hundred  The  battle  of 
men,  occupied  Breed's  Hill  which  adjoined  Bunker  Hill,  Bunker  Hm- 
on  the  peninsula  of  Charlestown,  overlooking  Boston.  On  the  morn 
ing  of  the  seventeenth  the  British  were  astonished  to  see  the  hastily 
constructed  fortifications  frowning  down  upon  them.  The  position  of 
the  Americans  had  been  rashly  chosen.  By  seizing  the  narrow  neck 
of  land  connecting  the  peninsula  with  the  mainland  and  thus  cutting 


130 


THE  REVOLT  OF  THE  BRITISH  COLONIES 


SCALE  OF' MILES 
01  23 

BOSTON  AND  VICINITY 


off  the  retreat  of   the  Americans,  the  British  could  have  destroyed 
the  colonial  army  at  their  pleasure;  but  General  Gage,  believing  that 

"the  rabble  of  New  England"  could 
not  possibly  stand  before  European 
regulars,  offset  the  folly  of  their  choice 
by  his  own  folly  in  determining  upon 
a  frontal  attack.  Giving  the  narrow 
neck  of  land  a  wide  berth,  Gage  sent 
an  army  under  General  Howe  by  wa 
ter  to  the  other  end  of  the  peninsula 
at  the  bottom  of  the  hill,  to  march 
up  and  drive  the  enemy  before  them. 
On  the  first  attempt  they  got  to  within 
fifty  yards  of  the  American  entrench 
ments  and  then  fell  back  before  the 
fire  directed  against  them.  They 
charged  a  second  time,  and  suc 
ceeded  in  getting  within  thirty  yards 
of  the  foe  before  they  were  driven  back.  In  the  third  attempt  they 
were  successful,  because  the  Americans  had  no  more  powder.  The 
persistency  of  the  British  cost  them  one  thousand  fifty-four  men  in 
killed  and  wounded,  or  more  than  a  third  of  their  entire  force.  The 
Americans  lost  four  hundred  and  forty-nine,  among  them  Doctor 
Joseph  Warren,  who,  with  the  two  Adamses  and  John  Hancock, 
had  been  a  leader  in  the  revolt  in  Massachusetts.  Evidently  their 
frontier  life  had  made  good  shots  out  of  the  New  England  "  rab 
ble."  While  the  battle  was  a  small  dne  and  a  defeat  for  the  Ameri 
cans,  never  has  a  defeat  had  more  inspiriting  effects.  The  fighting 
blood  of  America  was  stirred,  and  the  belief  in  the  superiority  of  British 
regulars  over  provincial  volunteers  was  dispelled. 

Two  weeks  after  the  engagement  at  Breed's  Hill,  commonly  known 

as  the  Battle  of  Bunker  Hill,  George  Washington  of  Virginia  arrived 

in  Cambridge  to  take  charge  of  the  American  forces  around 

Washington      Boston.     The  Continental  Congress  had  appointed  him  to 

as  comman-      ^g  command  of  the  American  forces  because  of  his  military 

reputation,  acquired  in  the  French  and  Indian  War.     They 

hoped  that   his  appointment  would    rally  the    southern  colonies  to 

the  cause,  which,  so  far  as  open  hostilities  were  concerned,  had  been 

up  to  this  time  merely  a  local  insurrection  in  New  England.     The 

forces  at  Boston  gave  the  new  commander  a  hearty  welcome. 

In  September  of  the  same  year,  1775,  the  colonies  in  revolt  attempted 
the  conquest  of  Canada,  in  the  hope  of  attaching  this  province  to  their 


THE  RISE  OF  POLITICAL  DISCONTENT  131 

cause.    One  army,  proceeding  northward  from  Lake  Champlain  under 
General  Montgomery,  took  Montreal  and  laid  siege  to  Quebec,  where 
it  was  soon  joined  by  a  second  division  of  eleven  hundred    The  expedi_ 
men  under  Colonel  Benedict  Arnold,  which  had  made  its    tion  against 
way  to  the  north  through  the  forests  of  Maine.    After      an 
a  combined  assault  on  the  stronghold  of  Quebec  on  the.  last  day  of 
the  year,  in  which  Montgomery  was  killed  and  Arnold  wounded,  the 
undertaking  was  abandoned. 

Washington  did  not  accompany  the  expeditions  to  Canada,  but 
settled  down  to  the  siege  of  Boston.  His  task  was  a  difficult  one. 
The  minutemen,  who  had  fought  at  Concord  and  Lexing-  The  siege  of 
ton  and  at  Bunker  Hill,  had  enlisted  but  for  short  terms,  so  Boston- 
that  before  the  winter  was  over  an  entirely  new  army  had  to  be  mus 
tered.  "It  is  not  in  the  page  of  history  perhaps,"  Washington  wrote, 
"  to  furnish  a  case  like  ours:  to  maintain  a  post  within  musket-shot  of 
the  enemy  for  six  months  together  without  powder,  and  at  the  same 
time  to  disband  one  army  and  recruit  another  within  that  distance  of 
twenty  odd  British  regiments."  In  February,  1776,  after  the  siege  had 
been  maintained  for  almost  a  year,  the  commander  wrote,  "My  situa 
tion  has  been  such  that  I  have  been  obliged  to  conceal  it  from  my 
officers."  In  one  month  more  the  powder  and  cannon  taken  at  Ticon- 
deroga  and  Crown  Point  arrived  and  all  was  changed.  Awaking  one 
morning  the  British  were  surprised  to  see  siege  guns  on  Dorchester 
Heights,  which  overlooked  Boston  from  the  south,  and  knew  that  they 
must  abandon  the  city  or  be  destroyed.  On  the  seventeenth  of  March, 
1776,  they  sailed  for  Halifax,  leaving  more  than  two  hundred  cannon 
to  the  Americans,  and  large  quantities  of  powder  and  ball. 

Both  General   Gage,   and   General  Howe  who  succeeded  him  in 
command  of  the  British  before  the  city  was  evacuated,  were  severely 
criticized  for  their  "negligence"  and  "delay"  during  the    criticism  of 
previous  winter,  when  the  weak  American  lines  might  have    the  British 
been  broken  through  at  almost  any  time.     The  spirit  of    gen' 
enterprise  and  daring  which  had  characterized  every  branch  of  the 
military  service  while  Pitt  and  the  Whigs  were  at  the  helm  in  Eng 
land  during  the  French  and  Indian  War,  seemed  now  conspicuously 
lacking  in  the  British  camps. 

Lord  Dunmore,  the  governor  of  Virginia,  made  an  effort  to  maintain 
the  British  authority  in  his  colony.  Though  forced  to  flee  from  the 
mainland,  he  harassed  the  coast  in  vessels  manned  by 

Til  6  WflT 

loyalists  and  slaves ;  he  threatened  the  colony  with  the    spirit  in  the 
horrors  of  a  servile  insurrection  by  proclaiming  freedom 
to  the  slaves  if  they  would  join  his  cause,  and  he  roused 


132  THE. REVOLT  OF  THE  BRITISH  COLONIES 

the  indignation  of  the  Virginians  to  the  highest  pitch  by  burning  the 
town  of  Norfolk.  He  was  forced  to  desist  at  last  in  the  summer  of 
1776. 

At  the  request  of  the  loyalist  governor  of  South  Carolina,  who 
desired  the  presence  of  British  regulars  to  encourage  the  loyal  senti- 
Repulse  of  ment  in  that  colony,  a  British  squadron  under  Clinton, 
SechariiSh  Cornwallis,  and  Parker  attempted  to  seize  Charleston, 
ton,  South  the  largest  and  richest  city  of  the  South.  A  small  band 
Carolina.  of  patriot  defenders  at  the  fort  on  Sullivan's  Island  off 
Charleston  repulsed  the  attack;  and  in  honor  of  its  brave  defender, 
Colonel  Moultrie,  the  fort  has  since  been  known  as  Fort  Moultrie. 
For  the  next  three  years  the  British  made  no  new  attempt  to  establish 
themselves  in  the  South. 

THE  LOYALISTS 

The  wisdom  of  the  Quebec  Act,  so  far  as  winning  the  allegiance  of 
that  colony  to  Great  Britain  was  concerned,  was  now  apparent,  for 
Four  loyal  under  its  liberal  provisions  the  French  Canadians  of  Que- 
colonies  on  bee,  in  the  full  enjoyment  of  their  own  laws,  customs, 

and  religion,  remained  loyal  to  their  new  rulers.  Union 
with  the  Protestants  of  New  England,  with  whom  they  had  little  in 
common  either  in  customs  or  in  creed,  had  no  attractions  for  them. 
Nova  Scotia,,  the  other  French-speaking  colony  of  Great  Britain, 
likewise  remained  outside  the  Revolution,  as  did  Great  Britain's  two 
new  colonies  in  the  south,  East  Florida  and  West  Florida,  which  were 
Spanish  in  origin  and  civilization. 

The  Americans  of  the  British  West  Indies,  though  generally  English 
in  origin,  also  refrained  from  attaching  themselves  to  the  revolutionary 

cause.  They  differed  from  the  revolting  mainland  colonies 
coioniesfin  in  several  important  respects.  Easy  of  access  by  water, 
the  West  ancj  surrounded  by  French  islands  from  the  beginning, 

they  had  early  learned  to  look  for  defense  to  the  navy  of 
the  mother  country.  Moreover  they  were  not  self-supporting  from 
the  industrial  point  of  view,  but  found  it  profitable  to  devote  their 
energies  to  raising  a  few  staple  products,  which  found  a  natural 
market  in  Great  Britain,  and  to  depend  on  that  country  and  the 
continental  colonies  for  most  of  their  supplies.  Furthermore,  because 
of  the  discomforts  and  dangers  of  the  tropical  climate,  many  of  the 
more  substantial  islanders,  whose  extensive  property  interests  gave 
them  large  influence  on  public  opinion  in  the  islands,  resided  for  a 
large  part  of  the  year  in  London,  where  they  acquired  the  British 
point  of  view.  It  had  been  in  the  interests  of  these  planters  that  the 


THE  RISE  OF  POLITICAL  DISCONTENT  133 

fatal  tariff  policy  in  regard  to  sugar  and  molasses  had  been  adopted 
by  the  British  statesmen.  As  a  result,  therefore,  of  the  strong  com 
munity  of  interests  with  the  mother  country,  the  revolutionary  spirit 
of  the  mainland  made  no  headway  in  the  islands.  It  was  strictly. con 
tinentals  who  were  in  rebellion. 

Even  in  the  revolting  colonies  the  spirit  of  rebellion  did  not  reflect 
the  unanimous  sentiment  of  the  people.  New  York,  Pennsylvania, 
and  North  Carolina  were  about  evenly  divided  between 

.  .          .  ,        r  •..  Ine  Loyalists 

the  Loyalists,  who  took  the  British  side  of  the  dispute,    intherevoit- 

and  the  Patriots,  who  supported  rebellion.  The  Loyalists  £f0£*isnland 
were  sometimes  called  Tories  from  the  name  of  the  party 
in  Great  Britain  which  stood  for  the  King's  policy.  In  Georgia  and 
South  Carolina,  where  because  of  the  planting  interests  there  was  to  a 
large  extent  the  same  point  of  view  as  in  the  island  colonies,  the  Loyal 
ists  were  the  more  numerous  body,  but  in  the  remaining  eight  colonies 
the  Patriots  predominated.  John  Adams  estimated  that  one-third  of 
the  whole  population  of  the  thirteen  colonies  and  more  than  one-third 
of  the  leading  inhabitants  were  opposed  to  the  Revolution. 

DEFIANCE    OF    GREAT   BRITAIN   ON   THE   WESTERN   FRONTIER 

The  agitation  in  New  England  over  the  tariff,  the  stamp  tax,  and 
the  presence  of  the  British  regulars,  culminating  in  the  spirit  of  war 
which  had  traveled  like  wildfire  from  one  end  of  the  long  The  British 
line  of  seaboard  colonies  to  the  other,  was  coincident  with  proclamation 
a  movement  farther  west  of  a  different  nature  but  exem 
plifying  the  same  spirit  of  independence.  In  the  French  and  Indian 
War  it  had  been  possible  for  the  British  to  rally  the  Americans  against 
the  French,  because  it  was  apparent  that  a  victory  for  the  French 
would  inevitably  result  in  shutting  the  Americans  of  the  coast  away 
from  the  coveted  interior.  Scarcely  had  the  issue  been  decided  against 
the  French  when  the  British  King  himself,  in  the  Proclamation  of  1763, 
did  the  very  thing  which  had  been  feared  from  the  enemy.  In  this 
proclamation  King  George  III  forbade  his  American  subjects  on  the 
seaboard,  although  possessed  of  claims  reaching  to  the  Pacific  under 
their  sea-to-sea  charters,  to  extend  their  boundaries  beyond  the  moun 
tains  or  to  enter  that  territory  which  they  had  spilled  their  blood  to 
win  from  the  French.  The  interior  of  the  country  from  Canada  to  the 
Gulf  was  reserved  to  the  Indians. 

The  real  object  of  the  proclamation  was  as  much  to  check  the  expan 
sion  of  the  colonies  and  render  them  more  easy  of  British  control,  as 
it  was  to  safeguard  the  welfare  of  the  Indians  and  reconcile  them  to 


134 


THE  REVOLT  OF  THE  BRITISH  COLONIES 


nings  of 
Kentucky. 


their  new  masters;  but  it  availed  nothing.  The  frontiersmen  would 
not  brook  such  restrictions,  and  the  southern  part  of  the  forbidden 
The  rising  land  slowly  slipped  away  from  the  British  by  "  manifest 
the  frontier*  destiny,"  that  is,  by  a  natural  working  of  forces  that 
Tennessee.  could  not  be  checked.  In  the  "back  country"  of  Penn 
sylvania,  Virginia,  and  the  Carolinas,  the  natural  highways  led  to  the 
southwest,  and  down  these  valleys  and  mountain  passes,  and  over  the 
Cumberland  Mountains,  by  way  of  the  Cumberland  Gap,  sturdy 
pioneers  from  the  colonies,  reenforced  by  the  Scotch-Irish  newcomers 
from  Europe,  in  defiance  of  the  King  of  Great  Britain,  took  up  their 
march  to  the  third  frontier.  The  Watauga  River  in  the  mountains  of 
western  North  Carolina  was  reached  by  a  small  company  under  the 
leadership  of  John  Sevier  and  James  Robertson  in  1769,  and 'a  number 
of  settlements  were  established,  which  soon  overflowed  into  what  is 
now  the  state  of  Tennessee. 

A  forward  movement  under  Daniel  Boone  pushed  into  the  central 
part  of  what  is  now  Kentucky,  and  delivered  that  region  from  the 
The  begin-  savages  by  a  decisive 

victory    over    the 

Indian  chief  Cornstalk 
and  his  followers  on  the  Kanawha 
River  in  1774.  The  first  town  in 
Kentucky  was  named  Lexington 
by  the  pioneers,  in  celebration  of 
the  battle  of  Concord  and  Lexing 
ton,  news  of  which  reached  them 
as  they  were  making  their  settle 
ment.  Tennessee  was  rid  of  the 
Indians  by  a  decisive  conflict  on 
the  Watauga  two  years  later. 

After  the  land  had  been  cleared 
of  the  savages  and  more  settlers 
had  pushed  into  the  country,  the 
The  instinct  inevitable  instinct  of 
of  self-gov-  the  frontier  for  self- 
ernment.  i 

government    asserted 

itself,  and  the  settlers  both  of  Ken 
tucky  and  of  Tennessee  came  to 
gether  in  their  respective  centers  DANIEL  BOONE 
without  permission  of  King,  Par 
liament,  or  governor,  elected  their  own  officials,  and  made  their  own 
laws,  while  they  were  still  nominally  within  the  jurisdiction  of  Virginia 


81°        Ix>ngitu.l«  Woe 


82  from  Greenwich  80 


THE  RISE  OF  POLITICAL  DISCONTENT  135 

and  North  Carolina  respectively.  The  southern  part  of  this  third  and 
newest  frontier  was  thus  in  open  defiance  of  the  mother  country  when 
the  first  shots  of  the  Revolution  were  fired  in  Massachusetts. 


THE  DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE 

In  the  midst  of  these  stirring  times  on  seaboard  and  inland  frontier, 
the  Second  Continental  Congress  met  at  the  call  of  the  First  Continental 
Congress,  in  Philadelphia,  on  the  tenth  of  May,  1775,  the  The  Second 
day  of  the  capture  of  Ticonderoga  and  Crown  Point,  and  Continental 
continued  its  sessions,  as  the  only  national  government  of  ongress' 
the  colonies,  throughout  almost  the  entire  war.  Among  the  new  mem 
bers,  who  had  not  been  present  in  the  First  Congress  of  1774,  were 
John  Jay  of  New  York,  Benjamin  Franklin  of  Pennsylvania,  and 
Thomas  Jefferson  of  Virginia.  The  Second  Congress,  like  the  first, 
was  appointed  and  controlled  by  the  revolutionary  assemblies,  conyen- 
lons,  and  committees,  and  was  dependent  upon  public  opinion  for 
sanction  of  its  acts.  As  the  only  authorized  agent  of  the  united 
colonies,  from  military  necessity  it  exercised  powers  for  which  there 
was  no  legal  warrant.  It  reenacted  the  Association  of  the  First 
!ontinental  Congress;  authorized  ten  companies  of  " expert  riflemen" 
:o  be  raised  in  Pennsylvania,  Maryland,  and  Virginia,  and  ordered  them 
to  " march"  and  "join  the  army  near  Boston";  made  rules  for  the 
government  of  the  Revolutionary  Army;  ordered  the  expedition  to 
Canada;  issued  paper  money  to  the  soldiers;  set  up  a  post  office; 
appointed  Washington  and  other  officers  to  their  positions  in  the  army; 
sent  off  to  the  King  the  loyal  "olive  branch"  petition  from  the  pen  of 
John  Dickinson;  and  within  three  weeks  after  Bunker  Hill,  issued  to 
the  world  a  declaration  of  the  causes  and  necessity  of  taking  up  arms, 
also  written  by  John  Dickinson. 

As  early  as  July  21,  1775,  the  Congress  began  the  consideration  of  a 
rormal  plan  of  union,  proposed  by  Benjamin  Franklin,  who  had  also 
Deen  the  author  of  the  Albany  plan  of  union,  to  take  the    The  new 
place  of  its  irregular  and  informal  mode  of  organization,    national 
[n  the  press  of  matters  requiring  immediate  attention,    gover] 
nothing  was  done  until  June,  1776,  when  a  committee  was  appointed  \ 
to  draw  up  another  plan.     After  long  debate  the  final  draft  of  the     * 
report  of  this  committee,  written  by  John  Dickinson,  was  adopted 
.n  November,  1777,  and  sent  to  the  states  for  ratification.  Not  until 
March,  1781,  did  Maryland,  the  last  state,  give  its  sanction  to  these 
Articles  of  Confederation,  and  not  till  then  did  they  go  into  operation. 
This  was  within  six  months  of  the  close  of  hostilities.     Throughout 


136  THE  REVOLT  OF  THE  BRITISH  COLONIES 

practically  the  whole  struggle,  therefore,  Congress  was  without  formal 
and  legal  basis  for  the  exercise  of  its  powers. 

Even  before  the  adoption  of  the  Articles  of  Confederation  for  the 
national  government,  Congress  advised  the  various  colonies  making 
The  new  UP  ^e  new  United  States,  to  organize  their  individual 

state  gov-  state  governments.  British  authority  in  the  colonies 
had  ceased  simply  because  of  the  absence  of  British 
soldiers  and  the  withdrawal  of  the  loyal  governors  before  the  rising 
storm.  The  resistance  of  Governor  Dunmore  in  Virginia  was  excep 
tional.  Congress  realized  the  need  of  regularly  constituted  author 
ity  in  each  colony,  and  recommended  in  May,  1776,  "the  respective 
assemblies  and  conventions  of  the  United  States,  when  no  govern 
ment  sufficient  to  the  exigencies  of  their  affairs  hath  been  hitherto  estab 
lished,  to  adopt  such  a  government  as  shall  in  the  opinion  of  the  repre 
sentatives  of  the  people  best  conduce  to  the  happiness  and  safety  of 
their  constituents  in  particular  and  of  America  in  general." 

Suddenly  called  upon  in  the  crisis  to  assume  the  reins  of  their  own 
government,  the  colonies  displayed  a  conservatism  that  was  admirable. 
Two  of  the  states,  the  corporate  colonies  of  Rhode  Island 
the  new  and  Connecticut,  found  it  sufficient  merely  to  continue 

state  gov-  their  colonial  charters  as  constitutions,  substituting  the 
word  "  people  "  for  "  King. "  All  the  new  state  constitutions 
continued  the  colonial  governor  and  legislature;  and  the  latter  body 
in  almost  every  instance  was  made  to  consist  of  two  houses,  with  the. 
balance  of  power  as  formerly  inclining  to  it  rather  than  to  the  governor. 
In  some  states  the  governor  was  made  dependent  on  the  law-making 
branch  for  his  appointment,  in  others  he  was  to  be  elected  by  the 
people;  in  some  he  was  not  allowed  to  veto  legislative  enactments,  in 
others  he  might  exercise  this  power.  The  judges  of  the  state  courts 
were  to  be  appointed  by  the  legislatures,  and  were  to  hold  their  office 
during  good  behavior.  The  right  to  vote  was  quite  generally  restricted 
to  the  property-holding  classes,  and  in  some  states  to  those  possessing 
certain  religious  qualifications.  Only  from  one-sixth  to  one-fiftieth  of 
the  population  were  allowed  to  exercise  the  right  of  suffrage,  and  this 
on  the  eve  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  which  was  to  proclaim 
that  all  men  were  created  equal.  Almost  every  state  constitution  con 
tained  a  bill  of  rights,  setting  forth  definitely  "the  rights  of  English 
men,"  for  which  the  colonists  had  always  contended.  None  of  the 
states  submitted  their  new  constitutions  to  the  people  for  ratification,, 
and  in  the  election  of  delegates  to  the  conventions  that  framed  the 
constitutions  the  Loyalists,  who  had  supported  England  in  the  war, 
were  generally  not  allowed  to  vote. 


THE  RISE  OF  POLITICAL  DISCONTENT  137 

Upon  receipt  of  the  conciliatory  addresses  of  the  First  Continental 
Congress  in  the  early  days  of  1775,  the  House  of  Commons  in  London 
was  the  scene  of  a  brilliant  debate,  in  which  William  Pitt,  The  failure 
now  the  Earl  of  Chatham,  Edmund  Burke,  and  other  of  the  con- 
Whigs  mercilessly  attacked  the  policy  of  the  King  and 
his  ministers,  and  brought  forward  various  schemes  of 
reconciliation.  The  Prime  Minister,  Lord  North,  sur 
prised  his  opponents  by  proposing  to  exempt  from  further  taxation  for 
the  purposes  of  revenue  any  colony  which  of  its  own  accord  would 
contribute  to  the  common  defense  of  the  empire  and  make  a  fixed 
appropriation  to  pay  the  salaries  of  its  governor  and  judges.  This 
measure  passed  both  houses  of  Parliament,  but  how  little  it  really  meant 
may  be  judged  from  the  attitude  of  Benjamin  Franklin,  the  agent  of 
Pennsylvania  and  Massachusetts  in  London,  who  left  England  for 
home,  convinced  that  war  was  inevitable. 

In  three  months  more  the  Second  Continental  Congress  dispatched 
the  last  petition  of  the  colonies,  intrusting .  its  delivery  to  Richard 
Penn,  a  descendant  of  the  founder  of  Pennsylvania,  and  The  British 
for  a  reply  received  the  royal  proclamation  that  they  proclamation 
were  in  rebellion.  In  that  three  months  blood  had  been 
shed  profusely  in  New  England  in  open  warfare,  so  that  the  proclama 
tion  would  seem  to  have  justification,  though  no  war  had  been  declared 
on  either  side.  "The  colonies  .  .  .  have  at  length  proceeded  to 
open  and  avowed  rebellion,  by  arraying  themselves  in  a  hostile  man 
ner,  to  withstand  the  execution  of  the  law,  and  traitorously  preparing, 
ordering  and  levying  war  against  us,"  ran  the  document;  and  all  the 
king's  officers  and  all  the  king's  men  were  commanded  "to  suppress 
such  rebellion,  and  to  bring  the  traitors  to  justice  ...  in  order  to 
bring  to  condign  punishment  the  authors,  perpetrators,  and  abettors 
of  such  traitorous  designs."  Parliament  and  the  King  proceeded  to 
emphasize  their  warlike  attitude  toward  the  colonies  by  an  act  pro 
hibiting  all  trade  and  intercourse  with  America. 

The  King  despaired  of  his  ability  to  recruit  a  sufficient  number  of 
his  own  subjects  to  serve  in  the  unpopular  war  against  his  colonies,  and 
sent  to  Russia  to  hire  soldiers  there;  but  the  Empress  The  German 
Catherine  refused  the  request.  King  George  next  applied  mercenaries, 
to  the  princes  of  some  of  the  small  German  states,  from  whom  he 
secured  about  thirty  thousand  men,  later  popularly  known  in  America 
as  Hessians,  because  most  of  them  hailed  from  the  little  state  of  Hesse- 
Cassel.  The  news  of  the  rejection  of  the  petition  of  the  Second  Con 
tinental  Congress,  of  the  issuance  of  the  King's  proclamation,  and  of 
the  hiring  of  the  mercenaries  reached  America  at  about  the  same 


138  THE  REVOLT  OF  THE  BRITISH  COLONIES 

time.  "Well,  brother  rebel,"  said  a  Southerner  to  a  fellow-member 
of  Congress,  "we  have  now  got  a  sufficient  answer  to  our  peti 
tion;  I  want  nothing  more,  but  am  ready  to  declare  ourselves  inde 
pendent." 

As  a  result  of  the  fighting  that  had  already  taken  place,  of  the 
assumption  of  national  powers  by  the  Continental  Congress,  of  the 
Th  mas  revolutionary  formation  of  new  state  governments  that 

Paine's  had  already  begun,  and  of  the  implacable  and  exasper- 

atin&  attitude  of  the  mother  country,  the  tide  of  public 
opinion  was  setting  in  fast  in  favor  of  independence. 
Thomas  Paine,  "a  newly  arrived  Englishman,"  issued  in  January, 
1776,  one  of  the  most  important  pamphlets  in  the  nation's  history, 
entitled  "Common  Sense."  This  was  a  stirring  call  for  independence, 
professing  to  apply  common  sense  to  the  undoubted  difficulties  of 
the  situation.  "The  present  state  of  America  is  truly  alarming  to 
every  man  who  is  capable  of  reflection.  Without  law,  without  govern 
ment,  without  any  other  mode  of  power  than  what  is  founded  on  and 
granted  by  courtesy,  .  .  .  independence  is  the  only  bond  that  can  tie 
and  keep  us  together.  We  shall  then  see  our  object,  and  our  ears  will 
be  legally  shut  against  the  wishes  of  an  intriguing  as  well  as  a  cruel 
enemy.  We  shall  then  be  on  a  proper  footing  to  treat  with  Britain; 
for  there  is  reason  to  conclude,  that  the  pride  of  that  court  will  be  less 
hurt  by  treating  with  the  American  states  for  terms  of  peace,  than  with 
those  she  denominates  'rebellious  subjects,'  for  terms  of  accommoda 
tion.  It  is  our  delaying  that  encourages  her  to  hope  for  conquest, 
and  our  backwardness  tends  only  to  prolong  the  war."  One  hundred 
thousand  copies  of  this  pamphlet  were  sold,  and  Washington  spoke 
of  it  as  "working  a  wonderful  change  (in  Virginia)  in  the  minds 
of  men." 

The  Americans,  who  opposed  the  writs  of  assistance,  the  stamp 
tax,  the  Townshend  Acts,  and  the  "Intolerable  Acts  of  1774,"  were 

avowedly  loyal  subjects  of  King  George  III.     They  were 
The  growth  •        *v  r  *        j 

of  the  desire     opposing  the  government  of  the  day,  to  be  sure,  but  not 

for  independ-  ^  sovereignty  of  the  British  Empire.  The  Stamp  Act 
Congress,  too,  and  the  First  Continental  Congress,  were 
loyal  bodies.  The  first  general  movement  toward  open  rebellion  came 
a  full  year  after  Concord  and  Lexington.  Only  then  did  the  statesmen 
of  the  Congress  at  Philadelphia  finally  commit  the  colonies  to  inde 
pendence;  and  their  action  was  accepted  as  the  one  possible  step  for 
lovers  of  liberty. 

On  the  seventh  of  June,  1776,  Richard  Henry  Lee  of  Virginia  moved 
in  Congress,  "  that  these  United  States  are,  and  of  right  ought  to  be,  free 


THE  RISE  OF  POLITICAL  DISCONTENT 


Of  the&Deda- 


and  independent  states,  that  they  are  absolved  from  all  allegiance 
to  the  British  crown,  and  that  all  political  connection  between  them 
and  the  state  of  Great  Britain  is,  and  ought  to  be,  totally 
dissolved."  The  vote  on  the  motion  was  postponed  till 
the  first  of  July,  that  time  might  be  gained  for  winning 
over  certain  waverers;  and  meantime  a  committee,  con 
sisting  of  Thomas 
Jefferson,  Benja 
min  Franklin, 
John  Adams,  Ro 
ger  Sherman,  and 
Robert  Living- 
ston,  was  ap 
pointed  to  draw 
up  a  declaration 
to  be  reported  and 
voted  on,  in  case 
the  resolution  in 
question  should  be 
passed.  Jefferson, 
then  thirty-two 
years  of  age,  pro 
ceeded  to  compose 
the  document, 
which  later  was 
somewhat  modi 
fied  by  Franklin 
and  Adams.  On 
the  first  of  July, 
Lee's  resolution 
was  taken  up  and 
on  the  next  day 
passed.  On  the 
fourth  of  July 
Jefferson's  declara 
tion  was  adopted, 
and  was  later  signed  by  fifty-five  members  of  the  Congress. 

"When  in  the  Course  of  human  events,"  ran  the  document,  one  of 
the  greatest  in  history,  "it  becomes  necessary  for  one  people  to  dissolve 
the   political  bands  which    have    connected   them  with    The  wor(jing 
another,  and  to  assume  among  the  powers  of  the  Earth,    of  the 
the  separate  and  equal  station  to  which  the  Laws  of  nature 


INDEPENDENCE  HALL,  PHILADELPHIA 
Where  the  Declaration  of  Independence  was  adopted. 


Declaration. 


140  THE  REVOLT  OF  THE  BRITISH  COLONIES 

and  of  Nature's  God  entitle  them,  a  decent  respect  to  the  opinions  of 
mankind  requires  that  they  should  declare  the  causes  which  impel 
them  to  the  separation. 

"We  hold  these  truths  to  be  self-evident,  that  all  men  are  created 
equal,  that  they  are  endowed  by  their  Creator  with  certain  inalienable 
Rights,  that  among  these  are  Life,  Liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of  Happi 
ness.  That  to  secure  these  rights,  Governments  are  instituted  among 
Men,  deriving  their  just  powers  from  the  consent  of  the  governed. 
That  whenever  any  Form  of  Government  becomes  destructive  of  these 
ends,  it  is  the  Right  of  the  People  to  alter  or  to  abolish  it,  and  to  insti 
tute  new  Government,  laying  its  foundations  on  such  principles  and 
organizing  its  powers  in  such  form,  as  to  them  shall  seem  most  likely 
to  affect  their  Safety  and  Happiness."  A  long  catalogue  follows  of  the 
abuses  suffered  at  the  hands  of  the  King,  to  prove  that  Great  Britain 
had  "failed  to  secure  these  rights."  "We,  therefore,  the  Representa 
tives  of  the  United  States  of  America,  in  General  Congress  Assembled, 
appealing  to  the  Supreme  Judge  of  the  world  for  the  rectitude  of  our 
intentions,  do,  in  the  Name,  and  by  the  Authority  of  the  good  People 
of  these  Colonies,  solemnly  publish  and  declare,  That  these  United 
Colonies  are,  and  of  right  ought  to  be  Free  and  .Independent  States; 
.  .  .  And  for  the  support  of  this  Declaration,  with  a  firm  reliance  on 
the  Protection  of  Divine  Providence,  we  mutually  pledge  to  each  other 
our  Lives,  our  Fortunes,  and  our  sacred  Honor." 

These  ideas  of  the  rights  of  man  and  the  obligations  of  government 
were  not  new  with  Jefferson.  The  English  writers,  Richard  Hooker, 
Origin  of  the  John  Milton,  Thomas  Hobbes,  and  John  Locke,  and  the 

ideas  of  the      French  philosopher,  Jean  Jacques  Rousseau,  and  many 

Declaration  '  J    .       J 

on  the  rights     others,  had  expressed  similar  sentiments,  which  Jefferson 

of  man.  j^^    doubtless    read.     Jefferson's   own    contemporaries, 

Samuel  Adams  and  James  Otis  in  Massachusetts,  had  often  spoken 
and  written  in  the  same  vein.  The  greatness  of  the  Declaration 
of  Independence  lies  not  in  its  originality,  therefore,  but,  first,  in 
the  fact  that  it  states  the  theories  of  popular  government  in 
simple  English  that  will  endure,  and,  second,  in  the  fact  that  its 
author  spoke  not  merely  as  the  student  of  political  theory,  but  as  the 
exponent  of  the  spirit  of  America,  the  spirit  of  self-government  as  it 
had  been  worked  out  in  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  of  frontier  struggle. 

The  independence  of  the  British  colonies  had  been  prophesied  by 
acute  observers.  In  1730  the  Frenchman,  Montesquieu,  expressed 
Pro  hecies  t^ie  belief  that  Great  Britain  would  some  day  lose  her 
ofindepend-  colonies.  In  1748  the  Swedish  traveler,  Peter  Kalm, 
ence-  wrote:  "I  have  been  told  by  Englishmen,  and  not  only  by 


THE  RISE  OF  POLITICAL  DISCONTENT  141 

such  as  were  born  in  America,  but  even  by  such  as  came  from  Europe, 
that  the  English  colonies  in  North  America,  in  the  space  of  thirty  or 
fifty  years,  would  be  able  to  form  a  state  by  themselves,  entirely 
independent  of  Old  England."  The  French  statesman,  Turgot,  once 
compared  colonies  to  fruit  which  remains  on  the  stem  until  it  is  ripe, 
and  after  the  peace  of  Paris  in  1763  another  French  statesman  wrote: 
"England  will  soon  repent  of  having  removed  the  only  check  that 
could  keep  her  colonies  in  awe.  They  stand  no  longer  in  need  of  her 
protection.  She  will  call  on  them  to  contribute  toward  the  burdens 
they  have  helped  bring  on  her,  and  they  will  answer  by  striking  off  all 
dependence." 

GENERAL   REFERENCES 

CHANNING,  United  States,  III;  G.  E.  HOWARD,  Preliminaries  of  Re-volution;  LECKY, 
American  Revolution;  TREVELYAN,  American  Revolution;  G.  L.  BEER,  British  Colonial 
Policy,  1754-1765;  FISHER,  American  Independence;  FISKE,  American  Revolution; 
TYLER,  American  Revolution;  ROOSEVELT,  Winning  of  the  West;  VAN  TYNE,  American 
Revolution. 

SPECIAL  TOPICS 

1.  THE  BOSTON  MASSACRE.     Contemporaries,  II,  429-431;  HARDING,  Orations, 
11-24. 

2.  THE  BOSTON  TEA' PARTY.     Epochs,  III,  93-103;  Contemporaries,  II,  431-433; 
TYLER,  American  Revolution,  I,  246-266;  AVERY,  United  States,  V,  154-171;  Source 
Book,  137. 

3.  THE  BATTLE  OF  BUNKER  HILL.     C.  F.  ADAMS,  Studies,  1-21;  AVERY,  United 
States,  V,  257-274. 

4.  THE  WATAUGA  SETTLEMENT.     ROOSEVELT,  Winning  of  the  West,  I,  166-193; 
BRUCE,  Daniel  Boone,  76-83,  and  247-280. 

5.  DANIEL  BOONE  AND  EARLY  KENTUCKY.     ROOSEVELT,  Winning  of  the  West, 
I,  244-271;  BRUCE,  Daniel  Boone,  and  American  Expansion,  1-23;  THWAITES,  Daniel 
Boone;  SPARKS,  Expansion,  88-103. 

6.  THE  DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.     Old  South  Leaflets,  IV,  3;  Epochs,  III, 
132-142;  Contemporaries,  II,  537-439;  H.  FRIEDENWALD,  Declaration  of  Independence; 
J.  H.  HAZELTON,  Declaration  of  Independence;  TYLER,  American  Revolution,  I,  494-518; 
H.  W.  ELSON,  Side  Lights,  3-24;  AVERY,  United  States,  V,  370-400;   Source  Book, 
147-149. 

ILLUSTRATIVE  MATERIAL 

HOLMES,  Ballad  of  Boston  Tea  Party,  and  Grandmother's  Story  of  Bunker  Hill  Battle; 
LANIER,  Lexington;  EMERSON,  Concord  Hymn;  LONGFELLOW,  Paid  Revcre's  Ride; 
LOWELL,  Concord  Ode,  and  Ode  for  the  Fourth  of  July,  1776;  BRYANT,  Green  Mountain 
Boys;  THOMPSON,  Green  Mountain  Boys;  HAWTHORNE,  Grandfather's  Chair,  Part  III; 
Howe's  Masquerade  in  Twice  Told  Tales,  and  Septimius  Fclton;  COOPER,  Lionel  Lincoln. 

SUGGESTIVE  QUESTIONS 

Give  the  arguments  for  and  against  the  stamp  tax.  What  had  there  been  in  George 
Washington's  civil  and  military  career  before  1775  to  fit  m'm  for  leadership  during  the 
Revolution?  Explain  the  leading  charges  against  Great  Britain  enumerated  in  the 


142  THE  REVOLT  OF  THE  BRITISH  COLONIES 

Declaration  of  Independence.  What  more  remote  causes  of  the  Revolution  can  you 
give?  How  did  the  attitude  of  the  Stamp  Act  Congress  toward  Great  Britain  differ 
from  that  of  the  Second  Continental  Congress?  Explain  this  difference.  Did  the 
British  Parliament  have  the  right  to  pass  the  Intolerable  Acts  of  1774?  On  what 
grounds  did  the  Americans  object  to  them?  Would  the  Americans  have  been  satisfied 
with  taxation  with  representation?  Is  the  Union  older  than  the  states?  Why  did 
Great  Britain  change  its  policy  toward  the  colonies  after  1763?  In  what  respects 
was  the  colonial  policy  of  Great  Britain  in  America  in  the  seventeenth  century  similar 
to  that  of  France,  and  in  what  respects  was  it  different?  What  changes  were  there 
in  the  two  policies  in  the  eighteenth  century? 


CHAPTER   XIII 
THE   WAR   OF   INDEPENDENCE 

THE   CAMPAIGNS  AROUND   NEW  YORK 

AFTER  his  success  in  delivering  the  capital  of  Massachusetts,  Wash 
ington  transferred  his  army  to  the  vicinity  of  New  York  City,  in  an 
effort  to  render  that  stronghold  secure  from  the  enemy.    Waghin  _ 
It  was  while  he  was  in  New  York  that  he  made  the  an-    ton's  defeat 


nouncement  to  his  army  of  the  Declaration  of  Indepen- 
dence,  which  the  soldiers  and  citizens  celebrated  by  tearing 
down  the  leaden  statue  of  George  III  on  Bowling  Green  and  melting 
it  into  bullets.  He  proceeded  to  fortify  a  position  on  Long  Island,  over 
looking  New  York.  The  British  fleet  under  Lord  Howe  and  the 
British  army  under  General  Howe,  who  had  brought  his  forces  back 
from  Halifax,  were  arrayed  against  him  in  overwhelming  numbers. 
Like  Prescott  at  Bunker  Hill,  Washington  suffered  defeat  at  Brooklyn 
Heights,  the  first  engagement  of  the  New  York  campaign,  but,  like  him, 
succeeded  in  drawing  off  his  army  in  safety,  first  to  Manhattan  Island 
and  then  north  into  the  country  beyond.  Before  abandoning  New 
York  the  American  commander  seriously  considered  burning  the  city, 
in  order  to  prevent  the  enemy  from  enjoying  any  advantage  in  its 
possession,  but  the  plan  was  not  carried  out;  and  to  the  end  of  the  war 
New  York  remained  in  the  hands  of  the  British.  General  Howe  was 
severely  criticized  for  allowing  Washington  to  escape  him  here,  for 
with  the  superior  British  forces  he  should  have  been  able  to  command 
both  the  land  and  the  water  routes  of  the  American  retreat.  The 
country  north  of  New  York,  including  Forts  Washington  and  Lee  on 
the  Hudson,  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  British  as  far  as  West  Point, 
but  this  key  to  the  Valley  of  the  Hudson  the  Americans  succeeded  in 
retaining. 

Retreating  up  the  east  side  of  the  Hudson  to  a  point  just  beyond 
White  Plains  and  then  across  the  river,  the  American  commander,  un 
able  to  risk  a  battle,  turned  southward  to  New  Jersey  and    The  retreat 
crossed  the  Delaware  into  Pennsylvania.     The  courage  of    from  New 
the  patriots  was  at  low  ebb.   The  militia  were  abandoning 
Washington  because  their  terms  of  service  were  at  an  end,  and  his  losses 

H3 
1 


144  THE  REVOLT  OF  THE  BRITISH  COLONIES 

around  New  York  had  reduced  the  troops  at  his  command  to  a  few 

thousand.     The  British  issued  a  pardon  to  all  who  would  submit,  and 

several  thousand  accepted  it.    One 

of  the  American  generals,  Charles. 

Lee,  who  had  fallen  into  the  hands 

of    the  British,   had  traitorously 

given  them  all  the  information  he 

could  concerning  the  plans  of  the 

Americans. 

In  the  last  days  of  1776  Wash 
ington  performed  two  remarkable 
Victory  at  feats  with  the  few 
troops  at  his  com 
mand.  On  Christmas  night,  when 
the  thermometer  was  at  zero,  and 


'        s-y -£!'!!£.... 

!~  X  Battles 

K&£    •.'•.  •  SCALE    OF   MILES 


the  snow  was  falling  fast, 
wisely  conjecturing  that  the 
British  army  of  German  mer 
cenaries  at  Trenton  would  be 
sleeping  soundly  after  a  day 
of  revelry  and  drinking,  he  em 
barked  a  detachment  of  two 
thousand  five  hundred  men  in 
rowboats  on  the  Delaware 
and  made  for  the  Trenton 

shore.     The  current  was  swift,  the  ice  cakes  threatening,  but  he  got 
his  men  across  and  fought  a  short  and  decisive  conflict  of  less  than 


THE  WAR  OF  INDEPENDENCE  145 

an  hour.  After  a  score  of  their  men  had  been  slain,  the  entire  body 
of  one  thousand  Hessians  surrendered.  The  patriot  loss  was  two  killed 
in  battle,  two  frozen  to  death,  and  a  few  injured. 

Now  came  the  British  general  Cornwallis  upon  the  scene  to  turn  the 
tables.     "At  last  we  have  run  down  the  old  fox  and  will  bag  him  in 
the  morning,"  said  he,  and  sent  his  army  to  sleep  for  a    and  at 
much-needed  rest.     While  the  British  slept,  "  the  old  fox  "    Princeton, 
slipped  away  under  cover  of  darkness,  leaving  behind  him  burning 
camp-fires  to  deceive  the  enemy,  and  won  a  victory  over  a  strong 
British  force  at  Princeton,  a  few  miles  away.     As  the  news  of  these 
achievements  spread  over  the  country  the  fainting  patriot  heart  took 
new  courage. 

The  rest  of  the  winter  of  1776-1777  Washington  spent  with  his  army 
undisturbed  at  Morristown  Heights,  west  of  New  York,  near  enough 
to  disturb  the  British  line  of  communications,  if  the  latter  The  winter 

should  make  a  sudden  move  on  Philadelphia.     It  was  a    ^mp.ait 

Mornstown 

dark  period  for  the  Americans.  Washington  reorganized  Heights, 
his  dwindling  army  and  pledged  his  own  private  fortune  to  177(S~1777- 
sustain  his  men.  Other  generals  did  the  same,  while  Robert  Morris, 
a  merchant  of  Philadelphia,  raised  a  subscription  of  fifty  thousand 
dollars  in  cash,  which  he  placed  at  the  disposal  of  the  commander-in- 
chief.  "These  are  the  times  that  try  men's  souls,"  wrote  Thomas 
Paine,  author  of  "  Common  Sense,"  in  the  first  of  a  series  of  pamphlets 
called  the  "Crisis,"  which  he  issued  from  time  to  time  during  the  war. 
"  The  summer  soldier  and  the  sunshine  patriot  will,  in  the  crisis,  shrink 
from  the  service  of  his  country;  but  he  that  stands  it  now,  deserves  the 
love  and  thanks  of  man  and  woman." 

THE   PHILADELPHIA  AND    SARATOGA   CAMPAIGNS 

In  the  spring  of  1777  General  Howe  set  out  by  water  from  New 
York  for  Chesapeake  Bay  to  attempt  the  capture  of  Philadelphia 
from  the  south.     Washington  opposed  him  at  the  Brandy-    The  British 
wine  River  in  southeastern  Pennsylvania,  and  at  Ger-    capture  of 
mantown,  a  suburb  of  Philadelphia,  but  could  not  prevent    ' 
him  from  occupying  the  city,  then  the  capital  of  the  new  United  States. 

In  northern  New  York  the  British  were  not  so  successful  as  around 
New  York  and  Philadelphia.     In  accordance  with  a  plan  of  campaign 
conceived  in  London,  Colonel  St.  Leger  with  a  force  of 
two  thousand  men  was  to  march  east  from  Lake  Ontario    pian  of  cam- 
through  the  valley  of  the  Mohawk  River  in  the  state  of    g^"1  the 
New  York,  General  Burgoyne  at  the  head  of  nine  thousand 
men  was  to  come  south  from  Canada  by  way  of  Lake  Champlain,  and 


146 


THE  REVOLT  OF  THE  BRITISH  COLONIES 


General  Howe  was  to  move  north  from  New  York  City  with  eighteen 
thousand  men,  the  three  columns  to  converge  toward  a  point  somewhere 
in  the  vicinity  of  Albany.  The  design  was  to  gain  possession  of  the 

Valley   of    the    Hudson      ^        , 

River  and  divide  the  re 
bellious  colonies  into  two 
sections,  with  defiant 
New  England  cut  off 
from  the  regions  that 
were  less  united  in  their 
resistance. 

St.  Leger,  who  had  in 


-*")    CAPTURE  &  EVACUATION 
OF  PHILADELPHIA 


m British 

— )      _,         Americn.nK 
X  Battles 

SCALE  OF  MILES 


_^~l'l 


•J(! 


4U 


his  command  British  regulars,  Tories  from  central  New  York,  and 
The  failure  Iroquois  Indians,  was  repulsed  by  Herkimer  in  the  bloody 
of  the  battle  of  Oriskany  at  the  headwaters  of  the  Mohawk, 

and  in  August,  1777,  was  finally  turned  back  at  Fort 
Stanwix  by  Herkimer  and  Arnold.  Howe  failed  to  receive  his  orders 
in  proper  time  and  went  off  to  the  capture  of  Philadelphia,  where  he 
was  kept  busy  throughout  the  summer  by  the  maneuvering  of  Wash 
ington  and  prevented  from  joining  Burgoyne  after  the  orders  for  that 
movement  finally  reached  him.  Burgoyne  was  left  to  operate  alone 
against  the  northern  army  of  the  Americans,  which  had  retreated  from 
Canada  after  their  failure  to  take  Quebec  and  was  now  under  the 
command  of  General  Schuyler  in  the  vicinity  of  Lake  Champlain. 


THE  WAR  OF  INDEPENDENCE 


147 


After  falling  back  from  Canada  in  the  early  months  of  1776  Schuyler's 
army  had  lost  Crown  Point,  and  now  in  1777,  before  the  oncoming  of 

Burgoyne,  was  forced  to  give  up  Ticon- 
deroga  as  well  as  Fort  Edward  on  the 
Hudson.  The  way  seemed  to  be  open 
ing  to  the  invaders.  Burgoyne,  how 
ever,  like  St.  Leger,  employed  savages, 
whose  cruelty  aroused  the  anger  of  the 
inhabitants  of  the  surrounding  country 
side  and  contributed  greatly  to  his  final 
undoing.  Trees  were  felled  in  his  path 
by  the  zealous  patriots,  roads  and 
bridges  destroyed,  and  his  supplies  cut 
off. 

In  desperation  Burgoyne  sent  a  force 
of  German  mercenaries  and  Indians  to 
overpower   the    citizen-sol-    The  battle 
diers  at  Bennington,  Ver-    of  Benning- 
mont,    and    capture    their 
stores;  but  the  expedition  was  met  and 
utterly  put  to  rout  by  hastily  gathered 
volunteers  under  Colonel  Stark.     Two 
hundred  of  the  thousand  Germans  en 
gaged  were  killed  or  wounded  and  seven 
hundred  captured. 

Cut  off  from  reinforcements  from  St. 
Leger  and  Howe  and  weakened  at  Ben 
nington,  the  situation  of  Burgoyne  be 
came  critical.  Schuyler,  who  planned 
the  campaign  against  him,  Surrender  of 

now   fell   a  victim   to   the    Burgoyne  at 

i  r  .    '  Saratoga, 

jealousy  of  certain  mem 
bers  of  Congress  and  was  superseded  by 
the  inefficient  General  Gates  on  the  very 
eve  of  victory.  The  Americans  met  the 
desperate  British  in  two  engagements  on 
the  Hudson  near  Lake  Saratoga,  the 
first  of  which  proved  indecisive  and  the 
second  a  complete  victory  for  the  Ameri 
cans,  a  victory  which  was  largely  due  to 

General  Benedict  Arnold's  superb  leadership.     On  October   17,   1777, 
Burgoyne  surrendered  his  entire  force  of  six  thousand  men. 


BURGOYNE 's  CAMPAIGN 


148  THE  REVOLT  OF  THE  BRITISH  COLONIES 

The  victory  of  Saratoga  has  been  recognized  as  one  of  the  "  decisive 
battles  of  the  world."  The  French,  since  their  humiliating  losses  in 
Timely  aid  the  French  and  Indian  War,  had  been  burning  for  re- 
from  France.  Venge  on  the  British,  and  were  now  pleased  to  see  the 
apparent  breaking  up  of  the  American  empire  of  their  rivals.  The 
achievements  of  Herkimer,  Arnold,  Schuyler,  and  Gates  and  their 
final  victory  aroused  great  enthusiasm  in  Paris.  France  concluded  a 
treaty  of  amity  and  commerce  and  another  of  alliance  with  the  strug 
gling  states,  which  she  recognize^  as  a  free  and  independent  nation. 
The  timely  intervention  proved  the  turning  point  of  the  war  for  the 
United  States,  for  it  not  only  greatly  encouraged  the  new  nation,  but 
also  secured  to  them  supplies  of  French  guns,  ammunition,  and  clothing, 
and  ultimately  the  assistance  of  the  French  army  and  navy.  The 
success  of  the  negotiations  leading  up  to  the  French-American 
treaties  was  due  largely  to  Benjamin  Franklin,  one  of  the  three  American 
representatives  in  Paris  at  the  time. 

The  Frenchman,  Marquis  de  Lafayette,  not  yet  twenty  years  of 
age,  had  enlisted  as  a  volunteer  under  Washington  without  pay  before 
Various  for-  the  treaties  were  concluded;  and  like  him  came  the  Ger- 
eign  soldiers.  mans  j)e  Ka^  an(j  yon  Steuben  and  the  two  Polish  nobles, 
Kosciusko  and  Pulaski,  soldiers  of  fortune  in  defense  of  liberty,  who 
proved  of  great  service  in  organizing  and  drilling  the  new  American t 
recruits. 

Spain  and  Holland  soon  joined  France  in  a  coalition  against  their 
old  rival,  so  that  Great  Britain  found  three  European  powers  arrayed 
The  war  in  against  her  in  Europe,  at  the  very  moment  she  was  fighting 
Europe.  jn  America  to  retain  her  colonial  possessions. 

The  full  significance  of  the  surrender  at  Saratoga  and  of  the  French- 
American  alliance  was  not  lost  on  the  Parliament  of  Great  Britain. 
.  Lord  North,   whose  compromise  measures  of   1775  had 

theJBritish0  failed  signally,  was  still  the  Prime  Minister.  Under  his 
compromise  leadership  the  Coercive  Acts  of  1774  were  repealed,  the 
tax  on  tea  abandoned,  and  the  right  to  tax  the  colonies 
renounced.  The  Taxation  of  the  Colonies  Act  of  1778,  which  still 
governs  Great  Britain's  relations  with  her  colonies  in  this  matter,  pro 
vided  that  Parliament  "will  not  impose  any  duty,  tax  or  assessment 
whatever,  payable  in  any  of  His  Majesty's  colonies,  provinces  and 
plantations  in  North  America  or  the  West  Indies;  except  only  such 
duties  as  it  may  be  expedient  to  impose  for  the  regulation  of  commerce; 
the  net  produce  of  such  duties  to  be  always  paid  and  applied  to  and  for 
the  use  of  the  colony,  province,  or  plantation,  in  which  the  sarrie  shall 
be  respectively  levied,  in  such  manner  as  other  duties  collected  by 


Hi1 


150          TiiE  REVOLT  OF  THE  BRITISH  COLONIES 

the  authority  of  the  respective  general  courts,  or  general  assemblies,  of 
such  colonies,  provinces  or  plantations,  are  ordinarily  paid  and  applied." 
Three  commissioners  crossed  the  Atlantic  on  a  mission  of  peace  to  offer 
these  concessions  and  to  give  assurance  that  Great  Britain  would 
never  again  send  troops  to  America  without  the  consent  of  the  local 
assemblies,  and  that  America  might  send  representatives  to  the  British 
Parliament.  Practically  all  the  original  contentions  of  the  colonies 
were  granted,  but  independence  was  the  only  condition  under  which 
the  Americans  would  now  lay  down  their  arms,  and  the  mission  ended 
in  failure. 

Before  the  French  supplies  arrived,  Washington  and  his  men  passed 
the  winter  of  1777-1778  at  Valley  Forge,  on  the  Schuylkill  River, 
The  winter  twenty-four  miles  above  Philadelphia,  in  great  suffering, 
camp  at  without  proper  food  and  without  shoes  and  blankets. 

Washington  said  of  tne  sufferings  of  his  men  at  this  time 
that  "  their  marches  might  be  traced  by  the  blood  from 
their  feet."  At  least  three  thousand  Americans  deserted  to  the  com 
fortable  British  quarters  in  Philadelphia,  where  the  enemy  were  passing 
a  winter  of  ease  and  gaiety. 

In  the  midst  of  the  general  depression  occurred  a  miserable  plot, 
known  as  Conway's  Cabal,  among  certain  generals  and  members  of 
Conway's  the  Continental  Congress,  to  displace  Washington  as 
Cabal.  commander-in-chief.  Fortunately  the  plot  failed  and 

left  the  commander  stronger  than  ever  in  the  esteem  of  his.  country. 

A  most  discouraging  feature  in  this  crisis  of  the  war  was  the  state 
of  the  national  finances.  Money  in  the  colonies  had  always  been  in  a 

confused  state;  English  money  was  most  commonly  used, 
The  discour-      ,  . '       , 6  /  .  . 

aging  state  of    but  money  or  other  countries  was  in  circulation,  par- 

ticularly  the  Spanish  dollar.  When  the  Continental 
Congress  faced  the  financial  problem,  it  met  with  almost 
insuperable  difficulties.  The  currency  issued  and  in  general  use  during 
the  war  consisted  of  Congress's  promises  to  pay,  printed  on  paper  but 
unsecured  by  gold  back  of  them.  Very  poor  money  it  proved  to  be,  " 
fof  its  value  changed  from  day  to  day  according  to  the  amount  of 
confidence  felt  by  the  people  in  the  ability  of  Congress  ever  to  make 
good  its  promises.  Measured  in  gold,  a  dollar's  worth  of  the  paper 
money  might  become  worth  only  a  few  cents  if  the  people  felt  that 
the  credit  of  Congress  was  poor;  and  on  the  other  hand,  when  more 
confidence  was  felt  in  the  ability  of  Congress  to  meet  its  obligations, 
the  value  of  the  notes  rose.  The  states,  too,  issued  such  money,  and 
it  has  been  estimated  that  the  total  face  value  of  the  notes  put  into 
circulation  by  Congress  and  the  states  together  during  the  Revolution- 


THE  WAR  OF  INDEPENDENCE  151 

ary  War  reached  $450,000,000.  Concerning  their  depreciation  Wash 
ington  sadly  declared  that  it  took  a  wagonload  of  money  to  buy  a  load 
of  provisions.  A  barber  in  Philadelphia  papered  his  shop  with  the? 
bills  to  show  his  contempt  for  them. 


^OfMTiGTital  Cur r o nScij-lLxp^ 


Bill  entbfa 
foB&ter  to  receive 
Sixty  Spanifh  mill 
ed  DOLLARS,  or 


Gold  or  Silver,  a.c- 

g  tt 
ion  M 


CONTINENTAL  MONEY 

Six  months  in  Philadelphia  convinced  Clinton,  who  had  succeeded 
Howe  in  command  of  the  British,  that  the  mere  possession  of  the  rebel 
capital  did  his  cause  little  good,  and  learning  that  a  The  British 
•French  fleet  under  Count  d'Estaing  was  crossing  the 
ocean,  he  marched  back  to  New  York  in  the  spring  of  to  New 
1778,  undisturbed  by  Washington  save  at  the  battle  of 
Monmouth.  Here  the  battle  was  lost  to  the  Americans  through 
the  treasonable  negligence  and  disobedience  of  Charles  Lee,  who 
was  again  in  the  American  army  by  the  exchange  of  prisoners,  his 
treason  having  been  undiscovered,  and  was  in  immediate  command 
of  the  American  forces  engaged.  Lee  was  tried  by  court  martial, 
suspended  from  co"mmand,  and  later  dismissed  from  the  army  in  dis 
grace.  After  Monmouth,  to  the  end  of  the  war,  the  only  other  im 
portant  battle  in  the  northeast  was  the  thrilling  capture  of  Stony  Point 
on  the  Hudson  by  General  Anthony  Wayne  in  1779.  This  attack  was 
ordered  by  Washington,  in  order  to  draw  the  British  troops  away 
from  a  marauding  expedition  into  Connecticut.  When  Clinton  and 
the  British  reached  New  York,  Washington  settled  down  on  guard 
11 


152  THE  REVOLT  OF  THE  BRITISH  COLONIES 

over  the  city  and  remained  there  three  years,  fighting  no  battles  and 
giving  his  army  little  to  do  beyond  keeping  a  close  watch  on  the  in 
trenched  British. 

WAR  IN  VARIOUS  QUARTERS 

While  Washington's  army  was  besieging  New  York,  the  Americans 
were  not  inactive  elsewhere.  Scarcely  a  week  after  Monmouth,  the 
Indian  out-  beautiful  Wyoming  Valley  in  the  northern  part  of  Penn- 
]?Snn  iri  ania  sy^vam'a'  wm'cn  na-d  been  settled  by  New  Englanders 
and^ewan  from  Connecticut,  was  the  scene  of  a  terrible  British- 
York.  Indian  massacre.  The  fourth  of  July,  which  came  the 
day  after  the  massacre,  disclosed  a  scene  such  as  the  frontier  had 
seldom  witnessed,  causing  a  shudder  of  sympathy  from  Maine  to 
Georgia.  Hundreds  of  settlers  went  to  their  death  under  the  most 
exquisite  torture  that  the  Indian  fiends  could  invent.  The  attacking 
party  came  out  of  New  York  State,  where  a  few  months  later  they  fell 
upon  more  victims  in  Cherry  Valley. 

Washington  determined  to  put  a  stop  to  these  outrages.  In  the 
summer  of  1779  he  sent  an  army  of  five  thousand  men  under  General 
General  Sullivan  to  devastate  the  entire  Iroquois  country  of 

Sullivan's         western  New  York,  and  seldom  have  instructions  been 

expedition  ,    .  ,  ,.    ,,  .    ,  .  . 

against  the       more  faithfully  carried  out.     After  a  battle  on  the  present 

Iroquois.  'site,  of  the  city  of  Elmira,  the  lands  of  the  Indians  were 
laid  waste  for  miles  around,  their  crops  destroyed,  forty  of  their  vil 
lages  burned,  and  the  inhabitants  themselves  put  to  flight.  The 
Mohawks  fled  to  the  northern  shores  of  Lake  Erie  in  Canada;  the 
lands  of  two  other  tribes  were  purchased  by  the  state  of  New  York, 
and  their  owners  scattered  to  various  parts  of  Canada  and  later  to. 
Michigan  and  even  to  Indian  Territory;  and  remnants  to  this  day 
still  inhabit  Indian  reservations  throughout  central  and  western  New 
York.  Thus  pass  from  the  history  of  the  United  States  the  mighty 
Iroquois,  who  had  been  a  tower  of  strength  first  to  the  Dutch  and  then 
to  the  British  against  all  their  enemies.  Their  loyalty  to  Great 
Britain  remained  to  the  end,  but  it  does  not  redound  to  the  credit  of 
the  mother  country,  that  as  she  waged  the  struggle  against  the  revolting 
colonies  she  called  savages  to  her  aid,  knowing,  from  her  experiences 
in  the  French  and  Indian  Wars,  the  nature  of  the  fighting  to  be  expected 
from  the  Indians.  The  British  claimed  that  the  Americans  also 
employed  the  Indians,  and  some  instances  of  this  can  be  found.  In 
almost  every  community  the  red  men  were  hostile  to  the  colonists. 

We  have  seen  how  the  country  south  of  the  Ohio  River  gradually 
filled  in  with  settlers  in  defiance  of  the  Crown,  and  how  the  settlers 


THE  WAR  OF  INDEPENDENCE 


153 


there   organized   their    own    independent    governments.     When    the 
spirit  of  war  seized  these  energetic  Americans  of  the  wilderness,  like 
their  brothers  on  the  seaboard  they  turned  their  thoughts  almost  at 
once  to  the  conquest  of  the  adjoining  British  lands  to  the    George  Rog_ 
north.     A  leader  arose  in  the  person   of   George  Rogers    ers  Clark's 
Clark,  a  pioneer  of  Kentucky,  scarcely  twenty  years  of    the^ountry 
age,  who  conceived  the  bold  project  of  organizing  a  band    north  of  the 
and  pushing  into  the  country  north  of  the  Ohio,  which  the 
British  had  incorporated  in  the  province  of  Quebec  and  had  fortified 
at  Cahokia,  Kaskaskia,  Vincennes,  Detroit,  and  other  points.     Gov 
ernor  Patrick  Henry,  Thomas  Jefferson,  and  other  leaders  in  Virginia. 


OHIO  FLATBOAT  WITH  SUPERSTRUCTURE  OF  ROUGH  LUMBER 

Craft  of  this  sort  were  used  by  families  who  intended-  to  use  the  lumber  for  house 
building  after  reaching  their  destinations. 

which  state  had  claims  on  the  lands  northwest  of  the  Ohio,  approved 
Clark's  plan,  and  the  legislature  of  Virginia  voted  him  twelve  hundred 
dollars,  and  full  authority  to  enlist  in  the  name  of  the  state  three  hun 
dred  and  fifty  men  for  his  enterprise.  In  boldness  of  conception  and 
execution  the  expedition  well  reflected  the  spirit  of  the  men  of  the 
West.  Down  the  Monongahela  to  the  Ohio  the  little  band  proceeded, 
down  the  Ohio  to  the  Mississippi,  and  thence  north  on  that  river  to 
Kaskaskia  and  Cahokia  in  the  present  state  of  Illinois,  nowhere  meet 
ing  resistance  worthy  of  the  name.  To  dispossess  Colonel  Hamilton, 
the  British  commander,  who  in  haste  had  made  a  long  march  from 
Detroit  to  Vincennes  on  the  Wabash,  Clark  and  his  men  made  their 
way  in  the  dead  of  winter  through  water,  snow,  and  ice,  across  the 
" drowned  lands"  of  southern  Illinois,  and  conquered  the  garrison 
at  Vincennes.  The  first  territorial  expansion  in  the  history  of  the 
United  States  had  been  accomplished. 


THE  REVOLT  OF  THE  BRITISH  COLONIES 


of  the 
conquest. 


John  Paul 
Jones, 
founder  of 
tne  United 
States  navy. 


On  seven  subsequent  occasions  the  United  States  has  extended  its 
borders  to  include  new  territory,  but  none  of  these  expansions  has 
Importance  surpassed  the  first  either  in  importance  or  in  romantic 
interest.  By  Clark's  conquest,  ratified  later  in  the  treaty 
of  peace,  the  new  nation  took  over  land  wrested  by  the 
British  from  the  French  in  1763.  In  view  of  their  treaty  of  alliance 
with  the  French,  it  re 
quired  skillful  diplomacy 
on  the  part  of  the  Ameri 
cans  to  preserve  unim 
paired  friendship  with 
their  allies  and  at  the 
same  time  prevent  the 
latter  from  acquiring 
again  their  lost  lands. 

In  another  part  of  the 
world,  John  Paul  Jones,  a 
young  Scotch 
immigrant, 
by  his  ex 
ploits  first 
brought  the  naval  power 
of  the  United  States  to 
the  attention  of  the  world 
and  made  himself  the 
father  of  the  American 
navy.  After  ravaging  the 
coast  of  Great  Britain  in 
the  Bon  Homme  Richard, 
and  damaging  her  ocean 

commerce,  he  fought  with  the  British  vessel  Serapis  "one  of  the  most 
obstinate  and  murderous  struggles  recorded  in  naval  history,"  in 
which  more  than  half  those  engaged  were  either  killed  or  wounded. 
In  the  midst  of  the  battle  Jones  ran  his  vessel  close  up  to  that  of  his 
antagonist  in  order  that  he  might  lash  the  two  vessels  together  for 
close  hand-to-hand  fighting.  "Have  you  struck  your  colors?"  called 
out  the  British  captain,  and  the  reply  came  back,  "I  have  not  yet  be 
gun  to  fight."  The  Serapis  surrendered,  but  the  Bon  Homme  Richard , 
on  fire  and  with  six  feet  of  water  in  her  hold  at  the  time  of  her  victory, 
sank  in  a  few  hours.  As  the  story  of  the  encounter  spread,  it  shed 
upon  the  little  American  navy  a  distinction  like  that  attained  by  the 
army  at  Saratoga. 


JOHN  PAUL  JONES 


THE  WAR  OF  INDEPENDENCE  155 

By  far  the  greatest  damage  done  to  the  British  on  the  sea  was  the 
work  of  privateers.  A  privateer  is  a  vessel  of  war,  privately  owned, 
equipped,  and  manned,  and  authorized  by  the  government  The  priva 
te  sail  against  the  commerce  of  the  enemy  for  the  sake  of  teers- 
booty.  Hundreds  of  American  privateers  preyed  upon  the  commerce 
of  the  British,  and  the  British  retaliated  in  kind.  The  special  object 
of  attack  by  the  American  boats  was  the  rich  British  trade  in  the  West 
Indies,  which  suffered  terribly.  It  has  been  estimated  that  in  the  first 
year  of  the  war  the  total  damage  inflicted  on  the  enemy  in  this  way 
amounted  to  £1,800,000.  By  the  end  of  the  second  year,  six  hun 
dred  British  and  nine  hundred  American  vessels  had  suffered  capture, 
and  by  the  close  of  the  war  the  figure  must  have  reached  thousands  on 
both  sides.  Fortunes  were  made  by  the  successful  privateers,  while 
patriots  on  land  were  sickening  and  dying  in  the  army.  Had  there 
been  no  such  attractions  on  the  sea,  it  would  undoubtedly  have  been 
easier  to  enlist  men  in  the  army,  yet  the  money  flowing  into  the  coun 
try  from  the  successful  privateering  ventures  helped  to  furnish  the 
sinews  of  war,  and  the  privateers  distinctly  aided  the  American  cause 
by  inspiring  in  the  British  merchants  a  desire  for  peace. 

Not  every  vessel  taken  by  privateers  was  held.     Many,  with  their 
cargoes,  were  released  upon  their  captains'  signing  agreements  to  pay 
ransom  money  at  the  end  of  the  war  and  giving  hostages    Customs  of 
to    guarantee  the  payment  of    the  money.     When    the    privateers, 
war  was  at  an  end,  these  agreements  were  impartially  enforced  by  the 
courts  of  both  nations. 

A  gloomy  incident  in  American  history  darkened  the  year  1780. 
As  an  accomplished  and  deserving  officer,  who  had  served  his  country 
well  around  Boston,  in  Canada,  and  in  the  Saratoga  Benedict 
campaign,  Benedict  Arnold  was  one  of  the  heroes  of  the  Arnold, 
war.  At  Saratoga  he  was  severely  wounded,  but  in 
1778,  upon  recovery  of  his  strength,  he  was  placed  by  Washington  in 
command  of  Philadelphia  after  the  British  abandoned  that  city  for 
New  York.  The  command  was  an  important  one,  but  it  did  not 
fully  satisfy  the  ambition  of  Arnold,  who,  though  he  had  been  made  a 
major  general  early  in  1777,  was  piqued  by  the  more  rapid  promotion 
of  others.  Charges  of  improper  conduct  at  his  new  post,  involving 
extravagance  and  possible  corruption,  were  made  against  Arnold,  for 
which  he  was  tried  by  court  martial,  convicted,  and  reprimanded,  as 
mildly  as  possible,  by  the  commander-in-chief.  The  proud  spirit  of 
the  soldier  revolted  at  the  disgrace,  and  already  planning  revenge, 
he  sought  and  secured  from  Washington  the  command  of  the  important 
post  of  West  Point  on  the  Hudson,  with  the  treasonable  intention  of 


156 


THE  REVOLT  OF  THE  BRITISH  COLONIES 


JOHN  ANDRE 
Drawn  by  himself  the  night  before  his  execution. 


surrendering  it  to  the  enemy.  If  this  could  be  accomplished,  the 
splitting  of  the  territory  of  the  Americans  which  Burgoyne  had  sought 
at  Saratoga  would  be  accomplished,  and  that  which  the  patriot 
Arnold  had  then  had  a  hand  in  preventing  by  his  bravery  would  now 

be  brought  about  by  his 
treachery.  Presently  a 
young  British  officer,  John 
Andre,  came  into  the  Ameri 
can  lines  below  West  Point 
and  with  Arnold  planned  in 
secret  the  details  of  the  pro 
posed  surrender.  On  his 
way  back  to  the  British 
lines,  Andre  was  taken  into 
custody  near  Tarrytown  by 
tnree  Americans,  Paulding, 
Williams,  and  Van  Wert,. 
who  found  on  his  person 
papers  which  fully  disclosed 
the  plot.  "Arnold  is  a  trai 
tor  and  has  fled  to  the  British!  Whom  can  we  trust  now?"  said 
Washington  to  his  officers,  with  tears  streaming  down  his  cheeks,  as 
he  came  riding  into  West  Point  a  few  hours  later. 

Arnold  made  good  his  escape  to  the  British,  but  Andre  was 
hanged  as  a  spy.  Four  years  before,  the  British  in  New  York 
The  fate  of  had  captured  and  hanged  as  a  spy  young  Nathan  Hale, 
Andre.  whom  Washington  had  sent  within  their  lines  to  gather 

information.  "I  regret  that  I  have  but  one  life  to  give  for  my 
country,"  said  he  to  a  British  officer  shortly  before  his  execution, 
while  Andre's  last  words  were  a  request  that  he  be  shot  and 
not  hanged. 

In  the  service  of  the  British  the  revengeful  Arnold  led  marauding 
expeditions  against  the  coast  of  Virginia  and  against  that  of  his  native 
Arnold  on  state  of  Connecticut.  After  the  war  was  over,  with  his 
the  side  of  wife  and  family  he  took  up  his  residence  in  London.  His 
sons  entered  the  British  army,  where  they  rendered  dis 
tinguished  service.  The  story  is  told  that  Arnold,  filled  with  remorse, 
called  for  his  old  uniform  with  its  epaulets,  as  he  was  about  to  die,  and 
put  it  on,  saying,  "Let  me  die  in  this  old  uniform  in  which  I  fought 
my  battles.  May  God  forgive  me  for  putting  on  any  other!" 


THE  WAR  OF  INDEPENDENCE 


157 


Their 


South. 


THE  SOUTHERN  CAMPAIGNS,  ENDING  AT  YORKTOWN 

After  the  failure  of  Burgoyne  and  the  return  of  Clinton  to  New 
York,  the  British  remained  largely  on  the  defensive  in    British  ^_ 
the  North,  secure  in  the  possession  of  New  York  City    vaskminthe 
and  of  the  country  north  as  far  as  West  Point, 
offensive    operations    were   di 
rected    against   the    states    at    the 
south,  in  the  hope  of  penetrating 
the  colonies  there,  summoning  the 
Loyalists   to    their    standard,   and 
working  northward.     In  1778  they 
took  Savannah  and  reinstated  the 
royal  governor  in  Georgia. 
1780   they  took   Charleston, 
defended  by  General  Lin 
coin  with  three  thousand 
Continentals,  and  over 
ran  the  whole  of  the 


REVOLUTION 

IN  THE 

SOUTHERN  STATES 


itish     -= 

SCALE 


state  of  South  Carolina.  At  first  the  chief  resistance  came  from  small 
isolated  bands  of  patriots  fighting  in  guerrilla  warfare  under  the  com 
manders,  Pickens,  Marion,  and  Sumter.  Small  reinforcements  arrived 
from  the  North  before  the  surrender  of  Charleston,  and  after  that 
event  came  more  northern  troops  and  General  Gates  to  succeed  Gen 
eral  Lincoln  in  command.  At  Camden,  in  the  central  part  of  South 


158  THE  REVOLT  OF  THE  BRITISH   COLONIES 

Carolina,  the  new  commander  met  with  humiliating  defeat  and  great 
losses  at  the  hands  of  Cornwallis. 

Pushing  on  from  this  victory  to  the  invasion  of  North  Carolina, 
Cornwallis  sent  a  division  of  one  thousand  Tories  under  Major  Ferguson 
The  battle  to  scour  the  highlands  of  the  western  part  of  the  state  for 
of  King's  more  Tory  recruits.  The  backwoodsmen  there,  however, 
proved  more  devoted  to  the  patriot  cause  than  was 
expected,  and  to  the  number  of  one  thousand  came  together  at  the  first 
warning  under  Sevier  and  other  pioneer  leaders,  to  resist  the  invasion. 
It  was  like  the  gathering  of  the  minutemen  at  Concord  and  Lexington 
and  of  the  citizen  soldiers  at  Bennington,  and  with  similar  results,  for 
Ferguson's  entire  force  of  twelve  hundred  men  was  entrapped  at 
King's  Mountain,  just  over  the  line  in  North  Carolina,  in  October,  1780, 
and  killed,  wounded,  or  captured  to  the  last  man.  The  American  loss 
was  inconsiderable. 

Reinforcements  for  the  patriots  poured  in  from  the  North.  The 
chief  command  of  the  southern  army  was  taken  from  General  Gates 
The  battle  of  and  given  to  General  Nathanael  Greene,  an  able  com- 
Cowpens.  mander,  who  immediately  divided  his  little  army  that  he 
might  harry  Cornwallis  on  both  his  flanks.  The  latter,  in  self-defense, 
also  divided  his  army,  and  the  two  western  detachments  of  the  opposing 
forces  met  at  the  Cowpens  in  western  North  Carolina,  where  the 
Americans  under  General  Morgan  overwhelmed  the  enemy  under 
Tarleton  in  almost  as  complete  a  rout  as  befell  Ferguson  at  King's 
Mountain.  A  mere  handful  of  the  British  escaped.  The  victory  was 
largely  due  to  the  American  cavalry,  a  branch  of  the  service  which  till 
then  had  been  little  used  in  the  war. 

Greene  himself  now  took  charge  of  Morgan's  victorious  men,  in  a 
desperate  attempt  to  unite  them  with  the  other  detachment  of  the 

Americans  operating  on  the  east  of  Cornwallis.  He 
General  ,  .  .  -  .  ,  .  .  , 

Greene's          succeeded  in  effecting  the  desired  junction  by  a  rapid 

great  march  to  the  north;  and  in  so  doing  he  contrived  to  decoy 

Cornwallis  across  the  entire  state  of  North  Carolina  to 
the  Virginia  line,  far  from  his  base  of  supplies  at  Charleston,  South 
Carolina.  A  drawn  battle  was  fought  at  Guilford  Court  House  in 
North  Carolina,  where  the  Americans  again  availed  themselves  of 
cavalry;  after  which  Cornwallis,  not  daring  to  attempt  the  march  over 
land  to  Charleston,  withdrew  into  Virginia  to  join  the  British  forces 
harassing  that  state.  Greene  wisely  refused  to  follow  the  enemy 
farther,  but  returned  southward.  Here  he  soon  recovered  all  the  out 
lying  country,  and  effectually  cooped  up  the  British  garrison  in  Charles 
ton,  where  it  remained  till  the  end  of  the  war.  Camden  was  retrieved. 


THE  WAR  OF  INDEPENDENCE 


159 


After  some  maneuvering  against  Lafayette,  who  was  in  command 
of  the  Americans  in  Virginia,  Cornwallis  settled  down  at  Yorktown, 
Virginia,  in  just  such  a  foolish  situation  as  that  taken  by    The  3^^ 
the  Americans  at  Breed's  Hill  at  the  outset  of  the  war.    surrender  at 
He  chose  a  position  near  the  coast  on  the  narrow  penin 
sula  between  the  York  and  the  James  Rivers,  with  water  on  three 
sides,  staking  all  on  the  ability  of  the 
British  to  bring  him  aid  from   New 
York  by  sea.     The  French  fleet,  how 
ever,  under  de  Grasse,   approached 
from  the  West  Indies,  fought  off  the 
British  fleet  in  a  fierce  engagement, 
and   prevented  Cornwallis's    escape 
from  his  predicament  by  water,  while 
Washington   with    four    thousand 
French  soldiers  under   Rochambeau 
and   two    thousand  Americans   exe 
cuted  a  rapid  movement  from   the 
vicinity  of  New  York  by  land  and 
water,  joined  his  reinforcements  to 
the  army  of  Lafayette,  and  cut  off 
the  British  retreat  up  the  peninsula. 
After  fierce  fighting,  Cornwallis  sur 
rendered  his  entire  force  of  7000  men, 
October    17,   four   years   after   Bur- 
goyne  had  surrendered  6000  men  at 
Saratoga.     Formal    surrender    came 
on   October    19,    1781.       Greene's 
masterly  campaign  in  the  Carolinas, 
Washington's   equally  wonderful 
movement  from  New  York,  and  the  timely  aid  of  the  French  had 
saved  the  day. 

Yorktown  ended  hostilities  so  far  as  the  United  States  was  con 
cerned,   but   Great   Britain's   European   enemies   continued   the   war 
against  her.     The  French  admiral,  de  Grasse,  had  cap-    The  war  in 
tured  all   the   British  islands   in   the  West  Indies  with    the  West 
the  exception  of  Jamaica,  Barbados,  and  Antigua,  and  the    Indies- 
fate  of  these  three  islands  as  well  as  of  the  eight  already  won,  hung  in 
the  balance  in  a  naval  battle  between  de  Grasse  and  the  British  under 
Admiral  Rodney  in  April,  1782.     On  the  coast  of  Virginia  off  Yorktown 
de  Grasse  had  worsted  the  British  fleet  and  helped  to  bring  about  the 
loss  of  the  revolting  continental  colonies,  and  if  he  could  worst  the  same 


SCALE  OF  MILES 


WASHINGTON'S  MOVEMENT  TO  YORKTOWN 


i6o 


THE  REVOLT  OF  THE  BRITISH  COLONIES 


fleet  a  second  time  the  British  island  empire  in  American  waters 
would  likewise  disappear.  Seventy  ships  of  war  were  engaged  for 
over  eleven  hours,  "  in  one  of  the  most  tremendous  contests  ever  wit 
nessed  on  the  ocean  before  the  time  of  Nelson."  Five  thousand  men 
were  either  killed  or  wounded,  the  French  power  in  the  islands  anni- 


THE  SURRENDER  AT  YORKTOWN 

From  an  old  print.  In  the  background  is  Yorktown,  from  which  the  British  troops  under  Lord 
Cornwallis  are  emerging.  The  British  appear  to  be  marching  straight  between  Washington's 
Army  on  the  hillside  and  the  French  forces  near  the  water.  The  warships  belong  to  the  French 
squadron  under  Count  de  Grasse. 

hilated,  and  the  British  islands  saved.  "Brittania  rules  the  waves," 
the  British  could  still  boast,  grateful  that  the  rich  islands  had  been 
saved  from  the  wreck  of  their  American  colonial  empire.  If  Rodney's 
victory  over  the  French  had  come  before  Yorktown,  who  knows 
what  courage  to  hold  out  might  have  been  inspired  in  the  British? 

More  than  a  year  before  his  defeat  of  the  French  under  de  Grasse, 
Rodney  and  his  fleet  had  captured  the  Dutch  island  of  St.  Eustatius  and 
St  Eustatius  carrie(^  away  a  booty  of  $20,000,000.  Referring  to  the 
trade  between  this  island  and  the  mainland  colonies,  the 
admiral  declared  that  "this  rock,  only  six  miles  in  length  and  three  in 
breadth,  had  done  England  more  harm  than  all  the  arms  of  her  most 
potent  enemies,  and  alone  supported  the  infamous  American  rebellion." 
The  end  of  ^n  ^ne  course  of  the  summer  of  1782,  the  British  over- 

the  war  in  came  the  Spaniards  at  Gibraltar,  in  Spain,  and  thus 
Europe.  maintained  their  possession  of  that  stronghold. 


THE  WAR  OF  INDEPENDENCE  161 

PEACE 

Not  till  after  Yorktown  would  George  III  yield  to  the  majority  of 
his  subjects  in  regard  to  America.  In  making  military  appointments, 
in  working  out  the  details  of  military  operations,  and  The  constitu_ 
in  the  general  conduct  of  the  v/ar,  he  had  directed  the  tionai  crisis  in 
policy  of  the  government,  his  ministers  serving  merely 
as  his  agents.  Even  the  Prime  Minister,  Lord  North,  to  whom  it 
fell  to  execute  the  orders  of  the  King,  was  at  heart  opposed  to  the  war, 
as  has  since  been  revealed  in  his  published  correspondence.  For  five 
years  that  minister,  to  please  his  royal  master,  consented  to  carry  on  a 
bloody  conflict  contrary  to  the  dictates  of  his  own  judgment.  After 
the  surrender  of  Burgoyne  the  nation  turned  to  Pitt,  the  savior  of  the 
country  in  the  crisis  of  the  Seven  Years'  War,  and  demanded  his 
appointment  as  Prime  Minister,  but  the  King  refused.  "This  episode," 
says  Lecky,  "appears  to  me  to  be  the  most  criminal  in  the  whole  reign 
of  George  III,  and  in  my  judgment  it  is  as  criminal  as  many  of  those 
acts  which  led  Charles  to  the  scaffold."  When  the  surrender  of  Corn- 
wallis  became  known  in  Great  Britain,  the  people  could  see  nothing  but 
the  decline  of  the  British  Empire,  and  were  plunged  into  the  deepest 
gloom.  To  such  a  pass  had  George's  policy  of  being  "every  inch  a 
King,"  brought  his  country.  In  obedience  to  the  will  of  his  angered 
subjects  the  King  at  last  allowed  North  to  resign,  in  March,  1782. 
The  Whig  Prime  Minister  to  succeed  him  was  Lord  Rockingham  and, 
at  his  death  in  the  following  July,  Lord  Shelburne,  who  brought  with 
themselves  into  office  other  Whig  friends  of  America  and  negotiated 
the  treaty  of  peace.  This  was  the  end  of  royal  control  of  the  British 
cabinet.  From  that  day  to  this  no  monarch  has  dared  to  keep  in 
office  ministers  who  do  not  possess  the  confidence  of  the  people.  The 
loss  of  her  American  colonies,  therefore,  profoundly  influenced  the  form 
of  the  British  government. 

The  peace  commissioners  of  the  United  States,  Benjamin  Franklin, 
minister  to  France,  John  Adams,  another  representative  of  the  United 
States  in  France,  John  Jay,  minister  to  Spain,  and,  at    The  peace 
the  very  end  of  the  negotiations,  Henry  Laurens,  met  the.  negotiations. 
British  representatives  at  Paris,  and  concluded  the  treaty  of  peace 

in  178^ Says  Lecky:  "It  is  impossible  not  to  be  struck  with  the  skill, 

hardihood,  and  good  fortune  that  marked  the  American  negotiations. 
Everything  that  the  United  States  could  with  any  shadow  of  plaus 
ibility  demand  from  England  they  obtained,  .  .  .  England  emerged 
from  the  struggle  with  a  diminished  empire  and  a  vastly  augmented 
debt,  and  her  ablest  statesmen  believed  and  said  that  the  days  of  her 


1 62  THE  REVOLT  OF  THE  BRITISH  COLONIES 

greatness  were  over.  But  America,  though  she  had  been  reduced  by 
the  war  to  almost  the  lowest  stage  of  impoverishment  and  impotence, 
gained  at  the  peace  almost  everything  that  she  desired,  and  started 
with  every  promise  of  future  greatness  upon  the  mighty  career  that 
was  before  her." 

The  independence  of  the  United  States  was  recognized  by  the 
treaty,  and  her  boundaries  made  to  extend  from  the  Atlantic  Ocean  and 
The  treaty  the  St.  Croix  River  on  the  east  to  the  Mississippi  River 
of  peace.  on  tjie  west>  ancj  from  the  forty-fifth  parallel,  the  St.  Law 
rence  River,  the  Great  Lakes,  and  the  Lake  of  the  Woods  on  the 
north  to  the  northern  boundary  of  Florida  on  the  south.  This  last 
line  ran  from  the  Mississippi  along  the  thirty-first  parallel  to  the 
Chattahoochee,  then  down  that  river  to  the  Flint,  and  in  a  straight 
line  to  the  St.  Mary's,  thence  along  that  river  to  the  sea.  It  was 
agreed  that  the  Americans  as  well  as  the  British  were  to  enjoy  the  right 
to  fish  on  the  Grand  Banks  off  the  coast  of  Newfoundland,  and  to  land 
and  cure  their  fish  on  certain  neighboring  .coasts.  The  United  States 
promised  that  there  should  be  no  impediment  offered  to  the  collection 
of  all  bona  fide  debts,  and  that  they  would  recommend  to  the  various 
states  that  they  pass  relief  acts  for  the  Loyalists.  Both  nations  were 
to  have  the  right  to_zi^;vigate_jthe _^nssissippij  which  right  had  been 
granted  by  Spain  to  Great  Britain  in  1763. 

In  a  separate  treaty  with  Spain,  Great  Britain  retained  Gibraltar, 
recompensing  Spain  by  allowing  her  to  hold  Florida,  while  in  a  treaty 
other  Brit-  with  France  the  French  and  British  islands  were  in  general 
ish  treaties.  restored  to  their  status  before  the  war.  In  a  British- 
Dutch  treaty  most  of  the  conquests  on  either  side  were  restored. 

On  April  19,  1783,  eight  years  after  the  battle  of  Concord  and, 
Lexington,  Washington  declared  the  war 'over;    the   treaty  of  peace 
The  complete    was    signed   September    3    of    the   same   year,  and    on 
restoration  of    November  23  the  last  British  soldiers  left  the  seaboard. 
peace.  "The  times  that  try  men's  souls  are  over,  arid  the  greatest 

and  completest  revolution  that  the  world  ever  knew  gloriously  and 
happily  accomplished,"  concluded  Paine  in  the  last  number  of  "The 
Crisis." 

During  the  war  the  lot  of  those  who  had  remained  loyal  to  the 

mother  country  was  a  hard  one.    In  civil  life  they  waged  many  a  bitter 

political  struggle,  usually  only  to  their  own  humiliation. 

^Loyalists     They  were    disarmed,   driven   away  from  the  polk  on 

during  the        voting  days,  ridden  on  rails,  tarred  and  feathered,  their 

houses  and  barns  burned,  and  their  property  confiscated. 

New  York  State  alone  seized  Loyalist  property  to  the  value  of  about 


THE  WAR  OF  INDEPENDENCE 


163 


$3,000,000.  It  was  observed  that  some  of  the  fiercest  fighting  of  the 
war  took  place  when  the  patriots  confronted  their  former  neighbors  in 
the  British  ranks. 

Whenever   the   British   troops   withdrew  from   any  quarter   large 
bands  of  Loyalists  followed  them.     Fifteen  hundred  left  Boston  with 
Howe  in   March,   1776,  and  three    thousand   abandoned    The  Loyalists 
Philadelphia  with  Clinton  in  1778.     When,  in  1783,  the    as  refugees, 
last  of  the  British  forces  left  the  shores  of  the  country,  Loyalists  by  the 


FRAUNCES'  TAVERN,  NEW  YORK 

Here  Washington  took  leave  of  his  officers,  December  4,  1783. 
an  etching  by  Wm.  Sartain. 


From 


thousand  gave  up  friends,  fortunes,  and  homes,  and  went  into  exile. 
It  has  been  estimated  that  the  United  States  by  this  movement  lost 
one  hundred  thousand  citizens  to  Canada,  the  West  Indies,  and  Great 
Britain.     Ultimately     Great    Britain    distributed    over    $15,000,000 
among  these  refugees  by  way  of  relief.     The  thousands  of  Loyalists 
who  still  remained  in  their  homes   in   every  state  were  destined  to 
furnish  the  basis  of  a  critical  and  conservative  class  in  the  new  nation. 
The  Loyalists  founded  Ontario  in  Canada,  and  contributed  many 
thousands  to  New  Brunswick  and  Nova  Scotia.     In  these  portions  of 
Canada  to-day  is  the  flourishing  society  of  United  Empire    The  Loyai_ 
Loyalists,  composed  of  the  descendants  of  the  first  refugees    ist  exodus 
and  comparable  to  the  Sons  of  the  American  Revolution 
in  the  United  States.     Says  a  Canadian  writer:  "It  is  but  truth  to 
say  that  the  Loyalists,  that  is,  the  Tories  of  the  American  Revolu- 


164  THE  REVOLT  OF  THE  BRITISH   COLONIES 

tion,  were  the  makers  of  Canada.     They  were  an  army  of  leaders. 
Canada  owes  deep  gratitude  to  her  southern  kinsmen,  who  thus,  from 
Maine  to  Georgia,  picked  out  their  choicest  spirits  and  sent  them  forth 
to  people  our  northern  wilds." 

Over  against  this  defection  of  native-born  citizens  is  to  be  set  the 

loyalty  of  many  foreigners,  who  had  but  recently  arrived  from  Europe. 

John  Paul  Jones,  Thomas  Paine,  and  thousands  who  served 

i.  116  pa.  ir  10  llC          *  i  i  * 

stand  of  the  in  tne  ranks  as  privates  were  as  thoroughgoing  Americans 
as  if  tliey  had  sPrung  from  the  soil  of  the  country.  Joseph 
Galloway,  speaker  of  the  house  of  assembly  in  Penn 
sylvania,  a  Loyalist  with  views  that  may  have  been  colored  by  parti 
sanship,  declared  that  one-fourth  of  the  American  army  was  American, 
one-half  Irish,  and  one-fourth  English  and  Scotch.  Lecky  gives  it  as 
his  opinion  that  "  adventurous  immigrants  who  had  lately  poured 
in  by  thousands  from  Ireland  and  Scotland  .  .  .  ultimately  bore 
the  chief  part  in  the  war  of  independence."  He  proceeds  to  point  out, 
however,  that  in  the  beginning  of  the  war,  most  of  the  soldiers  came 
from  New  England,  where  the  population  was  of  almost  pure  English 
origin;  and  he  refers  to  the  opinion  of  one  authority  that  Massachu 
setts  furnished  more  than  one-fourth  of  all  the  continental  soldiers. 
The  leaders,  too,  in  the  movement  for  independence,  such  as  Samuel 
Adams,  John  Adams,  John  Hancock,  George  Washington,  and  Patrick 
Henry,  were  native  Americans.  Whatever  the  proportion  engaged,  the 
foreign-born  element  played  an  honorable  part  in  the  war. 

Great  Britain  did  not  at  once  learn  the  lesson  of  the  American  Revolu 
tion,   that  she  must  grant  self-government  to  colonies  inhabited  bj 

men  of  her  own  race;  but  after  a  rebellion  in  Canada  in 
of  the658  1837?  she  granted  self-government  to  Quebec  and,  from  time 
Evolution  to  t*me  tnerea^ter?  to  tne  other  Canadian  provinces,  to 

Newfoundland,  Australia,  New  Zealand,  and  finally,  in  the 
early  years  of  the  twentieth  century,  to  South  Africa.  These  colonies 
elect  their  own  officials,  make  their  own  laws  with  few  exceptions, 
adjudge  their  own  cases  in  their  own  courts,  though  with  appeal  to 
British  courts,  and  pay  no  taxes  to  the  British  treasury;  they  receive  the 
protection  of  the  British  navy  free  of  expense;  and  they  loyally  contrib 
uted  a  million  soldiers  and  millions  of  money  to  Britain  in  the  world-war 
which  broke  out  in  1914.  This  imperial  bond,  uniting  far-away  com 
monwealths  to  the  mother  country  is  the  basis  of  the  British  Empire  of 
to-day,  and  stands  as  one  of  the  greatest  achievements  of  the  last  cen 
tury  in  world  politics.  The  smaller  colonies  of  the  Empire,  inhabited  by 
backward  native  races,  have  not  been  granted  self-government. 


THE  WAR  OF  INDEPENDENCE  165 

GENERAL   REFERENCES 

CHANNING,  United  States,  III;  LECKY,  American  Revolution;  TREVELYAN,  Ameri 
can  Revolution;  FISKE,  American  Revolution;  TYLER,  American  Revolution;  VAN  TYNE, 
American  Revolution;  E.  S.  MACLAY;  United  States  Navy;  WINSOR,  America,  VI;  FISHER, 
American  Independence,  and  Benjamin  Franklin. 

SPECIAL  TOPICS 

1.  FRANKLIN  IN  FRANCE.     Old  South  Leaflets,  VII,  5 ;  Epochs,  III,  142-149;  MORSE, 
Benjamin  Franklin,  217-299;  HALE  AND  HALE,  Franklin  in  France. 

2.  LAFAYETTE  IN  AMERICA.     Old  South  Leaflets,  I,  7,  and  IV,  5,  97,  and  98. 

3.  THE  BRITISH  PRISON  SHIPS.    TYLER,  American  Revolution,  II,  225-245. 

4.  GEORGE  ROGERS  CLARK.    Epochs,  III,  188-196;  ROOSEVELT,  Winning  of  the 
West,  II,  1-90;  THWAITES,  How  George  Rogers  Clark  Won   the  Northwest;    BRUCE, 
Daniel  Boone,  173-198. 

5.  JOHN  PAUL  JONES.     Old  South  Leaflets,  VII,  152;  AVERY,  United  States,  VI,  260- 

.6.  THE  LOYALISTS.  VAN  TYNE,  Loyalists;  TYLER,  American  Revolution,  I,  293- 
383,  and  II,  51-130;  WINSOR,  America,  VII,  185-214;  AVERY,  United  States,  VI,  333~ 
341. 

7.  THE  UNITED  STATES  FLAG.  J.  H.  Fow,  True  Story  of  the  American  Flag;  H. 
CHAMPION,  American  Flag-— The  Ensign  of  Liberty,  Journal  of  American  History,  I, 
9-18. 

ILLUSTRATIVE  MATERIAL 

COOPER,  Pilot  and  Spy;  E.  P.  ROE,  Near  to  Nature's  Heart;  P.  L.  FOP.D,  Janice 
Meredith;  W.  CHURCHILL,  Richard  Carvel  and  The  Crossing;  S.  O.  JEWETT,  Tory 
Lover;  THOMPSON,  Alice  of  Old  Vincennes;  S.  W.  MITCHELL,  Hugh  Wynn;  THACKERAY, 
The  Virginians;  BRYANT,  Song  of  Marion's  Men;  WHITTIER,  Yorktown;  CAMPBELL, 
Gertrude  of  Wyoming;  HARTE,  Thankful  Blossom;  HALE,  Paul  Jones  and  Denis  Duval. 

SUGGESTIVE   QUESTIONS 

Give  an  estimate  of  the  generalship  of  Howe,  Cornwaiiis,  and  Washington.  What 
lesson  in  colonial  administration  was  taught  by  the  American  Revolution.  Show  how 
the  uprising  of  citizen  soldiers  at  various  times  influenced  the  course  of  the  American 
Revolution.  How  in  general  did  the  powers  of  the  first  and  second  Continental  Congress 
differ  from  those  of  the  present  Congress  of  the  United  States?  Whose  services  to  the 
Revolution  were  greater,  Washington's  or  Franklin's?  How  do  you  justify  the  position 
of  the  Loyalists?  Was  the  United  States  ungrateful  to  France  in  the  peace  negotia 
tions?  What  reasons  can  you  give  for  the  failure  of  the  invasion  of  Canada?  Why 
was  Clark's  conquest  of  the  Northwest  Territory  so  easy?  Was  the  Revolutionary  War 
a  civil  war  between  two  parts  of  the  same  nation,  or  a  war  between  two  different 
nations?  How  many  years  of  actual  fighting  were  there  in  the  Revolution?  Where 
was  the  fighting  carried  on  in  the  different  years?  Summarize  the  aid  of  the  French 
to  the  Americans.  What  concessions  were  made  by  the  British  and  what  by  the  Ameri 
cans  in  the  peace  negotiations?  Ought  the  United  States  to  have  remunerated  the 
Loyalists? 


PART   IV 

ORGANIZATION   OF   THE    UNITED    STATES    OF    / 
AMERICA,    1781-1801 

CHAPTER   XIV 

THE   FAILURE   OF   THE   ARTICLES    OF    CONFEDERATION, 

1781-1789 

THE  WEAKNESS  OF  THE   CENTRAL  GOVERNMENT 

THE  freedom  of  the  thirteen  revolting  colonies  was  one  thing,  their 
permanent  union  in  time  of  peace  another.  Should  the  thirteen  new 
The  contin-  states  go  on  each  by  itself,  or  together  under  a  common 
ued  necessity  government?  Could  they  survive  at  all  if  not  united? 
In  war  separate  state  action  was  manifestly  impossible. 
When  the  War  of  Independence  was  looming  on  the  horizon  and  while 
it  was  in  progress,  petty  differences  had  to  be  laid  aside  for  the  common 
good,  while  the  struggling  colonies  acted  together  under  the  uniform 
rule  of  the  Continental  Congress. 

The  Articles  of  Confederation,  which  went  into  operation  in  1781, 
provided  for  a  central  government  with  practically  the  same  powers 
The  Articles  as  those  already  assumed,  without  legal  sanction,  by  the 
of  Confed-  Second  Continental  Congress.  All  power,  such  as  it  was, 
legislative,  executive,  and  judicial,  was  vested  in  Congress, 
though  this  Congress  of  the  Confederation,  which  succeeded  the  Second 
Continental  Congress,  saw  fit  to  delegate  part  of  its  authority  to 
other  bodies.  It  selected  certain  state  courts  to  try  cases  of  piracy 
and  felony  on  the  high  seas,  and  created  special  courts  of  appeal  in 
prize  cases.  A  large  part  of  its  executive  powers  Congress  passed 
over  to  three  boards  or  departments,  headed  by  Robert  Livingston, 
and  after  him,  John  Jay,  Secretary  of  Foreign  Affairs,  Robert  Morris, 
Superintendent  of  Finance,  and  General  Knox  and  later  General 
Lincoln,  Secretary  of  War. 

When  peace  came  it  proved  more  difficult  for  the  Congress  of  the 
Confederation  to  exercise  its  authority  than  during  the  war,  and  almost 

166 


FAILURE  OF  THE  ARTICLES  OF  CONFEDERATION         167 

impossible  for  it  to  command  respect.     Students  of  the  subject  are 
now  quite  generally  agreed  that  during  the  six  years  from    The  failure 
1783    to    1789    the   government    of    the    Confederation    of  the 
was  a  failure.     The  states  treated  it  with  contempt,  the       ti( 
people  lost  respect  for  it,  and  foreign  nations  insulted  it  with  impunity. 
The  national  government  was  fast  drifting  into  anarchy,  though  city 
governments,  county  governments,  and  state  governments  were  on 
the  whole  proceeding  successfully. 

There  was  no  one  executive  head  or  President  and  no  national  judi 
ciary  under  the  Articles  of  Confederation;  and  Congress,  like  the 
First  and  Second  Continental  Congresses,  was  in  reality 
still  a  meeting  of  delegates,  selected  by  the  state  legisla-  states 
tures  and  acting  under  instructions  from  those  bodies, 
In  voting  power  in  Congress  the  states  were  equal,  each 
with  a  single  vote,  which  was  cast  by  the  majority  voice  of  the  state 
delegation;  and  for  the  enactment  of  most  measures  by  Congress  a 
two-thirds  vote  was  required.  To  amend  the  Articles  of  Confederation 
a  unanimous  vote  of  all  the  states  was  necessary.  Sometimes  the 
states  refused  to  send  any  delegates  to  the  Congress;  sometimes  they 
paid  their  delegates  only  a  meager  salary  or  even  none  at  all,  and  so 
were  often  unable  to  secure  the  services  of  competent  men;  a5id  some 
times,  to  save  expense,  two  states  united  in  the  support  .:-..  ?  single 
set  o/  delegates.  Nor  was  it  ever  certain  that  the  delegates,  once 
elected,  would  regularly  attend  the  meetings  to  which  they  were  ac 
credited. 

Congress  had  no  power   to  raise  money  by  taxation,   but  was 
compelled  to  rely  on  the  voluntary  contributions  of  the  states  for  all 
that  it  expended.     Occasionally  the  states  paid  the  sums    Inability  of 
that  Congress  requested,  but  as  often  refused  to  do  so.    Congress  to 
During  the  life  of  the  Confederation  Congress  received 
from  the  states  only  $6,000,000  of  the  $16,000,000  which  it  requested. 
This  explains  the  failure  of  the  national  government  to  pay  the  soldiers 
all  that  was  due  them,  and  its  failure  to  discharge  promptly  its  indebted 
ness  in  Europe.     It  literally  had  no  money  and  could  procure  none. 
The  financial  reputation  of  the  country  was  soon  ruined. 

This  common  reputation,  as  well  as  that  of  the  separate  states,  was 
further  shattered  by  the  tardiness  with  which  the  latter  met  their 
state  obligations  and  by  their  extreme  readiness  to  issue  for    jrinances  Of 
circulation  among  the  people  paper  money  such  as  had    the  separate 
been  discredited  in  the  days  of  the  war. 

In  contrast  to  their  general  disregard  of  the  common  good,  was  the 
patriotic  disposition   by  the  states  of  their  western  lands.     Massa- 

12 


i68  ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES 

chusetts,  Connecticut,  and  Virginia,  by  the  sea-to-sea  clause  of  their 
The  surren-  charters,  North  Carolina,  South  Carolina,  and  Georgia, 
der  of  the  by  virtue  of  their  charters,  and  New  York  by  various 
lands  of  the  treaties  with  the  Iroquois,  each  laid  claim  to  a  part  of 
Confess  t^ie  terr^tory  between  the  Alleghany  Mountains  and  the 

Mississippi  River.  Virginia's  claim  seemed  particularly 
strong  because  of  the  recent  conquest  of  the  country  northwest  of  the 
Ohio  by  her  state  forces  under  George  Rogers  Clark,  but  her  claims 
were  overlapped  by  those  of  Massachusetts,  Connecticut,  and  New 
York.  Conflict  seemed  inevitable.  The  states  like  Pennsylvania, 
New  Jersey,  and  Maryland,  which  had  no  western  claims  and  there 
fore  were  possessed  of  less  land  from  the  sale  of  which  to  raise  revenue 
and  thus  to  reduce  taxes,  were  dissatisfied.  Maryland  went  so  far  as 
to  lay  down  as  a  condition  of  her  entering  the  Confederation  that 
the  larger  states  surrender  to  Congress  their  western  claims.  New 
York  responded  by  giving  up  her  claims  in  1780,  and  was  soon  followed 
by  Virginia,  Massachusetts,  Connecticut,  North  Carolina,  and  South 
Carolina.  Georgia  held  out  till  1802.  A  part  of  her  claim,  the  so- 
called  Western  Reserve  in  northeastern  Ohio,  Connecticut  withheld 
from  the  national  government  and  disposed  of  directly  to  individuals, 
devoting"  a  portion  of  the  proceeds  to  those  of  her  citizens  who  had  lost 
property  at  the  hands  of  the  British  invaders  during  the  Revolution 
ary  War,  nnd  the  remainder  to  the  building  up  of  her  common 
school  system. 

The  transfer  of  the  western  lands  to  the  national  government  had 
enormous  influence  upon  the  future  of  the  country  aside  from  the 

direct  result  upon  the  territory  itself,  for  in  this  way 
fluence  of  there  was  created  a  common  bond  of  interest  among  the 
the  land  states  at  a  time  when  such  bonds  were  few  and  weak. 

The  steps  that  finally  led  to  the  federal  constitutional  con 
vention  of  1787,  as  will  presently  appear,  were  taken  in  response  to  a 
desire  to  improve  communication  and  transportation  between  the  sea 
board  and  the  new  national  possessions  in  the  West. 

It  was  safe  for  individuals,  as  well  as  for  the  states,  to  despise  and 
disobey  Congress,  as  that  body  had  no  power  to  punish  individuals  and 

no  soldiers  to  carry  out  its  command  save  those  voluntarily 
viduals  1  furnished  by  the  states.  A  sense  of  humiliation  filled  the 
treated  country  when  drunken  soldiers  in  Philadelphia,  clamoring 

for  their  pay,  which  Congress  had  not  the  power  to  give 
them,  actually  drove  that  body  out  of  the  city  at  the  point  of  the 
bayonet.  The  large  body  of  Loyalists  must  have  beheld  with  satis 
faction  the  impotence  of  the  new  government. 


FAILURE  OF  THE  ARTICLES  OF   CONFEDERATION         169 

Great  Britain  was  naturally  unfriendly  to  the  United  States.     She 
signed  the  treaty  of  peace,  withdrew  her  troops  from  the  seaboard, 
and  formally  received  John  Adams  as  minister  from  the    HQW  fordgn 
United  States,  but  that  was  all.     She  sent  no  minister  of    nations 
her  own  to  the  United  States  for  a  number  of  years,  and 
she  refused  to  conclude  with  her  a  treaty  of  commerce, 
though  trade  between  the  two  countries  went  on  none  the  less.     She 
frankly  gave  as  her  reason  for  refusing 
to  make  such  a  treaty  that  she  did  not 
choose  to   enter  into   an   agreement 
with    the    Congress1  of    the    United 
States   which   each   of    the    thirteen 
states   might   break   with  impunity. 
This  was  plainly  the  attitude  of  an  un 
friendly  nation,  for  Holland,  Sweden, 
and   Prussia,  friends   of   the   United 
States  during  the  late  war,  readily  en 
tered  into  friendly  commercial  treaties 
with  the  new  nation.     His  Majesty, 
George  III,  also  refused  to  open  up 
his  ports  in  the  West  Indies  to  United 
States  vessels,  which  had  been  shut 
out  from  this  rich  trade  by  the  war 
and  were  now  clamoring  for  their  old 
market.     More  galling  still  was  the 
unexpected    refusal    of    the    British 
to  carry  out  in  full  the  provisions  of 
the  treaty  of  peace  of  1783  by  the 

withdrawal  of  their  troops  from  the  posts  northwest  of  the  Ohio  River, 
which  they  had  formally  agreed  to  evacuate.  Moreover,  they  made 
no  move  to  compensate  the  slaveholders  of  the  United  States  for  the 
millions  of  dollars'  worth  of  slaves  which  their  army  had  carried  off 
during  and  at  the  close  of  the  war.  It  was  alleged  on  the  part  of  Great 
Britain  that  the  United  States  herself  was  refraining  from  complying 
with  the  treaty  of  1783  in  two  respects;  first,  by  refusing  any  compen 
sation  to  the  Loyalists,  and  second,  by  not  compelling  the  payment  of 
private  debts  owed  to  British  merchants  before  the  war.  Congress 
did,  indeed,  in  compliance  with  the  provisions  of  the  treaty,  recom 
mend  to  the  states  that  they  make  provision  for  recompensing  the 
Loyalists;  but  it  made  this  recommendation,  well  knowing  that  it  had 
no  power  to  enforce  it  and  that  the  states  would  do  nothing. 

With   the  limited  powers   of   the   national   government   and   the 


JOHN  ADAMS 


170  ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  UNITED   STATES 

deplorable  lack  of  public  interest  in  national  affairs,  there  is  small 
Symptoms  wonder  that  a  quarrelsome,  lawless  spirit  made  its  appear- 
of  anarchy  ance  in  the  states  and  led  many  patriots  to  fear  that  the 
nation  was  breaking  up.  New  York  was  so  far  a  stranger 
to  a  feeling  of  friendliness  for  the  neighboring  states  as  to  lay  a  tariff 
duty  on  firewood  coming  into  her  borders  from  Connecticut  and  on 
farm  and  garden  supplies  from  New  Jersey;  Connecticut  levied  taxes 
on  importations  from  Massachusetts,  and  other  states  imposed  similar 
taxes.  It  was  a  continuation  of  the  old  custom  of  intercolonial  taxa 
tion  under  Parliament.  Thus  arose  a  bitter  commercial  struggle 
between  sovereign  states.  Connecticut  and  Pennsylvania  almost 
came  to  blows  over  the  possession  of  Wyoming  Valley,  which  was 
finally  awarded  to  the  latter  by  a  special  court  of  arbitration. 

Rhode  Island  and  Massachusetts  were  harassed  by  internal  politi 
cal  contests  over  the  expediency  of  issuing  paper  money.  In  Rhode 
Shays's  Island  paper  money  carried  the  day,  but  civil  order  was 

Rebellion.  threatened  and  business  came  to  a  standstill  while  the 
question  was  pending.  In  Massachusetts  the  issue  of  paper  money 
was  defeated,  but  more  than  a  thousand  citizens,  discontented  at  the 
outcome,  gathered  themselves  into  an  armed  band  near  Worcester  in 
the  central  part  of  the  state  under  the  leadership  of  Daniel  Shays,  and 
devoted  themselves  for  several  months  to  military  drill  in  preparation 
for  active  opposition  to  the  state  authorities.  They  burned  barns, 
plundered  houses,  prevented  courts  from  sitting,  and  besieged  the 
arsenal  at  Springfield,  until  a  superior  force  of  militia  was  sent  against 
them,  which  after  some  skirmishing  compelled  them  to  lay  down  their 
arms.  Shays's  rebellion,  while  a  small  affair  in  itself,  was  portentous 
because  of  the  tendencies  to  lawlessness  which  it  disclosed.  Said 
Washington,  hearing  of  the  uprising:  "How  melancholy  is  the  reflection 
that  in  so  short  a  space  we  have  made  such  long  strides  toward  ful 
filling  the  predictions  of  our  transatlantic  foes.  '  Leave  them  to  them 
selves  and  their  government  will  soon  dissolve.'  Will  not  the  wise  and 
the  good  strive  hard  to  avert  this  evil?  .  .  .  Thirteen  sovereignties 
pulling  against  each  other,  and  all  tugging  at  the  Federal  head,  will  soon 
bring  ruin  on  the  whole." 

When  Congress,  for  the  purpose  of  securing  a  commercial  treaty 
with  Spain,  which  would  enable  the  vessels  of  the  United  States  to  trade 
The  spirit  of  in  Spanish  ports,  proposed  to  renounce  forever  her  claim, 
secession  in  based  on  the  treaty  of  peace  of  1783,  to  the  free  navigation 
and  U  of  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi,  lying  in  Spanish  territory, 

Tennessee.  ^e  infant  community  of  Kentucky  rose  in  opposition. 
She  was  angered  at  a  policy  which  would  deprive  her  of  a  free  outlet 


FAILURE  OF  THE  ARTICLES  OF  CONFEDERATION         171 

to  the  ocean  for  her  products,  and  boldly  threatened  to  secede  from 
the  Union  if  Congress  did  not  desist  from  its  purpose.  The  proposed 
treaty  was  abandoned.  The  same  spirit  of  secession  cropped  out  in 
the  sister  community  of  Tennessee,  then  legally  a  part  of  North  Caro 
lina.  These  western  counties  of  North  Carolina,  in  rebellion  at  what 
seemed  the  neglect  of  their  interests  by  the  mother  state,  for  some 
months  maintained  an  independent  organization  as  the  state  of  Frank 
lin,  under  the  pathfinder,  John  Sevier,  as  governor,  and  even  requested 
Congress  to  sanction  their  secession  from  North  Carolina  by  admitting 
them  into  the  Union  as  a  separate  state.  Congress  refused  the  request, 
and  shortly  afterwards  the  seceders  resumed  their  former  allegiance. 
With  secession  cropping  out  on  the  frontier,  civil  uprising  pending 
in  two  states,  and  bitter  interstate  feuds  arising  in  various  sections, 
the  restraints  and  obligations  of  government  were  visibly  weakening. 
The  Confederation  was  in  fact  a  mere  "rope  of  sand." 

Congress  scored  one  success  in  the  midst  of  its  failures.  When 
the  four  large  states  surrendered  to  it  their  western  claims,  the 
United  States  found  herself  in  the  position  of  Great  The  one 
Britain  before  the  Revolution,  for  she  had  a  frontier  success  of 
of  her  own  to  govern.  To  her  credit  be  it  said  that 


she  treated  her  frontier  in  the  same  general  way  in  which  nance  of 
the  Americans  had  always  contended  that  Great  Britain 
should  treat  her  colonies.  She  did  not  oppress  the  new  land,  but 
in  a  wise  law,  called  the  Ordinance  of  1787,  provided  that  the 
new  territory  should  have  a  governor  appointed  by  Congress,  that 
it  should  have  its  own  legislature,  that  under  certain  restrictions  it 
should  make  its  own  laws,  and  that  some  day  it  should  be  divided  into 
states  with  the  same  rights  and  privileges  as  the  original  thirteen  states. 
Slavery  in  the  territory  was  forever  prohibited,  and  religious  liberty 
was  guaranteed.  No  tariff  tax  on,  trade  between  the  territory  and  the 
states  was  imposed,  and  both  states  and  territory  were  to  share  the 
expenses  of  national  government  in  the  same  proportion.  It  was  pro 
vided  that  "Religion,  morality,  and  knowledge  being  necessary  to  good 
government  and  the  happiness  of  mankind,  schools  and  the  means  of 
education  shall  forever  be  encouraged."  As  the  different  states  were 
formed  out  of  the  Northwest  Territory  and  admitted  into  the  Union, 
the  national  government,  by  virtue  of  its  ownership  of  the  land,  set 
apart  lot  sixteen  in  every  township,  one  thirty-sixth  of  the  entire  state, 
for  the  endowment  of  common  schools,  and  two  whole  townships  in 
each  state  for  the  endowment  of  a  state  university.  The  same  benefi 
cent  educational  policy  was  later  applied  by  the  United  States  to  the 
states  formed  west  of  the  Mississippi. 


172 


ORGANIZATION  OF  THE   UNITED   STATES 


This  statesmanlike  ordinance  resulted  partly  from  the  desire  of  Con 
gress  to  insure  a  national  revenue  from  an  increase  in  the  sale  of  public 
The  settle-  lands,  which  naturally  lagged  as  long  as  there  was  uncer 
tainty  as  to  the  nature  of  the  government  of  the  territory. 
As  soon  as  the  new  law  was  on  the  statue  books,  the  Ohio 
Company,  which  had  been  formed  in  New  England  several  years 


ment  of 
Ohio. 


THE  START  OF  THE  OHIO  COMPANY  FROM  IPSWICH,  MASSACHUSETTS, 
FOR  MARIETTA,  OHIO 

before  and  had  delayed  taking  up  land  for  settlement  until  it  could 
secure  the  guarantee  of  Congress  that  orderly  government  according 
to  New  England  standards  would  be  established  in  the  territory,  pur 
chased  one  million  acres  of  land  north  of  the  Ohio  River,  and  in  1788 
laid  out  the  town  of  Marietta,  in  what  is  now  the  state  of  Ohio. 

THE   CONSTITUTIONAL   CONVENTION   OF    1787 

People  endured  the  general  chaos  of  government  under  the  Con 
federation  for  a  few  years  and  then  welcomed  a  change.     Nothing 
shows  better  how  seriously  they  felt  the  inadequacy  of 
ment  for  a        their  national  system  than  the  response  of  the  states  in 

jygy  to  the  suggestion  of  a  national  convention  to  consider 
'     ' 

the  improvement  of  the  federal  government.  This  came 
about  indirectly.  Representatives  of  Maryland  and  Virginia  first 
came  together  in  1785  at  Mt.  Vernon,  Washington's  home  on 
the  Potomac,  to  decide  upon  a  commercial  policy  respecting  the 
navigation  of  the  Potomac  River  between  the  seaboard  and  the  new 


new  national 
government. 


FAILURE  OF  THE  ARTICLES  OF  CONFEDERATION         173 

West.  They  accomplished  their  object  but  saw  that  to  make  any 
policy  effective  broader  cooperation  was  necessary.  At  the  invitation 
of  Virginia,  delegates  from  all  the  states  were  summoned  to  meet  the 
next  year  at  Annapolis,  Maryland,  to  discuss  the  question  of  a  general 
commercial  policy  for  the  entire  country.  In  this  convention  five 
states  were  represented,  but  nothing  was  done  beyond  adopting  an 
address  to  all  the  states,  written  by  Alexander  Hamilton  of  New 
York,  urging  them  to  send  delegates  in  1787  to  a  convention  in  Phila 
delphia  which  should  have  a  still  broader  purpose,  namely,  "  to  devise 
such  further  provisions  as  shall  appear  to  them  necessary  to  render 
the  Constitution  of  the  Federal  government  adequate  to  the  exigencies 
of  the  Union,  and  to  report  to  Congress  such  an  act  as,  when  agreed 
to  by  them,  and  confirmed  by  the  legislature  of  every  state,  would 
effectually  provide  for  the  same."  Official  sanction  of  the  convention 
was  later  given  by  the  Congress  of  the  Confederation. 

Fifty-five  delegates  came  together  in  Philadelphia  in  this,  the  most 
important  convention  in  the  history  of  the  country,  every  state  being 
represented  but  Rhode  Island,  which  feared  that  in  a    The  national 
stronger  union  her  commercial  rights  would  suffer.     It  was    convention, 
in  this  same  summer  of  1787  that  the  Congress  of  the  Confedera 
tion,  sitting  in  New  York,  passed  the  Ordinance  of  1787. 

Virginia  headed  her  list  of  delegates  with  the  name  of  George  Wash 
ington,  who  added  to  his  long  line  of  benefactions  to  his  country  when 
he  heartily  supported  the  convention.  The  weight  of  his  Leading 
influence  back  of  the  movement  added  much  to  its  chances  delegates- 
of  success,  for  nearly  everybody  loved  and  honored  him  and  was  ready 
to  follow  him.  With  him  from  Virginia  came  James  Madison  and 
Edmund  Randolph.  Benjamin  Franklin,  eighty-two  years  old  but 
with  a  mind  as  active  as  that  of  a  youth,  headed  the  delegation  from 
Pennsylvania,  with  James  Wilson,  Robert  Morris,  and  Gouverneur 
Morris  as  colleagues.  Alexander  Hamilton  was  the  leading  delegate 
from  New  York,  John  Dickinson  from  Delaware,  Roger  Sherman  and 
Oliver  Ellsworth  from  Connecticut,  Elbridge  Gerry  and  Rufus  King 
from  Massachusetts,  and  Charles  Pinckney  and  Charles  Cotesworth 
Pinckney  from  South  Carolina.  John  Adams  was  absent  from  the 
country  as  minister  to  Great  Britain,  Thomas  Jefferson  as  minister 
to  France,  and  John  Jay  as  minister  to  Spain. 

With  Washington  in  the  chair  as  moderator,  the  convention  sat  in 
secret  session  from  May  to  September.     Several  of  the  members  kept 
notes  of  the  proceedings,  the  most  complete  of  which  are    Madison's 
those  of  James  Madison,  published  in  1840,  a  few  years    "Notes-" 
after  his  death. 


174  ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  UNITED   STATES 

The  so-called  Virginia  plan,  presented  to  the  convention  by  Ran 
dolph  and  favored  by  the  larger  states,  provided  for  a  national  govern- 
The  Virginia  ment  of  three  departments,  legislative,  executive,  and 
plan.  judicial.  The  legislative  branch,  in  the  two  houses  of 

which  the  preponderance  of  power  was  to  be  with  the  more  populous 
states,  was  to  appoint  the  executive  and  judicial  branches. 

Fearful  of  the  power  of  the  larger  states  under  such  an  arrangement, 
the  smaller  states  pushed  a  plan  of  their  own,  known  as  the  New  Jersey 
The  New  plan,  designed  to  preserve  the  equality  of  the  states.  This 
jersey  plan.  plan  was  practically  that  of  the  Articles  of  Confederation 
with  amendments.  By  it  Congress  was  to  consist  of  one  house,  in 
which  the  states  were  to  have  equal  representation,  each  casting  one 
vote,  which  was  to  be  decided  by  the  majority  of  its  delegation;  and, 
as  in  the  Virginia  plan,  there  were  to  be  a  national  executive  and  a 
national  court.  An  extreme  plan,  proposed  by  Hamilton  and  based 
on  the  theory  that  the  "  British  government  was  the  best  in  the  world," 
called  for  what  would  have  been  practically  a  monarchical  form  of 
government,  but  this  plan  was  given  no  serious  consideration  by  the 
convention,. 

Only  by  compromise  could  the  conflicting  interests  of  the  large  and 

small  states  be  harmonized.     "Give  New  Jersey  an  equal  vote,  and 

she  will  dismiss  her  scruples  and  concur  in  the  national 

Ine  leading  ,,       .  ,  ,         .  ,        ,  , 

compromises  system,"  said  one;  and  so  it  proved,  when  the  small  states 
stitution0n"  were  &iven  an  eclual  v°te  with  the  large  states  in  the  upper 
house  of  the  legislative  branch.  By  what  was  appropri 
ately  termed  the  "great  compromise,"  a  national  legislature  of  two 
houses  was  created,  in  the  upper  house  of  which,  called  the  Senate,  the 
states  were  to  be  equal,  with  two  members  from  each  state,  chosen  by 
the  legislature  thereof,  while  in  the  lower  branch,  or  House  of  Repre 
sentatives,  the  larger  states  were  given  the  advantage  by  the  provision 
that  the  number  of  a  state's  representatives  in  this  body  was  to  be  based 
on  population.  The  members  of  this  house  were  to  be  elected  by  the 
people.  In  reckoning  the  population  of  a  state  for  representation  in 
this  house  and  also  for  direct  taxes,  three-fifths  of  the  slaves  were  to 
be  counted.  After  this  fundamental  decision  as  to  Congress,  the 
next  great  difficulty  concerned  the  executive,  whether  this  branch  of 
the  national  government  should  be  single  or  multiple,  and  whether 
the  incumbent  or  incumbents  should  be  elected  by  Congress,  by  the 
people,  or  by  electoral  colleges.  After  prolonged  discussion  the  present 
electoral  colleges  were  agreed  upon.  An  electoral  college  was  to  be 
chosen  in  each  state  as  the  legislature  of  that  state  might  direct,  and 
was  to  consist  of  as  many  members  as  there  were  United  States  Sena- 


FAILURE  OF  THE  ARTICLES  OF  CONFEDERATION         175 

tors  and  Representatives  from  the  state.  The  various  colleges  were  to 
meet  in  their  respective  states,  cast  their  ballots  for  President  and 
Vice  President,  and  send  the  returns  to  Washington  to  be  counted  in 
the  joint  session  of  the  Senate  and  the  House  of  Representatives. 

The  President  was  made  the  commander-in-chief  of  the  army  and 
navy  of  the  United  States,  and  of  the  militia  of  the  several  states  when 

called  into  the  service  of  the  national  government.     He    , 

.          11      rr  •  i       TT    •      i     The  powers 

could  grant  pardons  for  all  offenses  against  the   United    ofthePresi- 

States,  except  in  cases  of  impeachment,  and  with  the  rati- 
fication  of  two-thirds  of  the  Senate  he  could  make  treat 
ies;  with  the  advice  and  consent  of  the  Senate  he  could  appoint 
ambassadors,  other  public  ministers  and  consuls,  the  judges,  and 
all  other  officers  of  the  United  States,  whose  appointment  was  not 
otherwise  provided  for.  From  time  to  time  he  was  to  give  to  Congress 
information  of  the  state  of  the  Union  and  to  recommend  to  it  such 
measures  as  he  should  deem  expedient.  He  was  allowed  to  call  Con 
gress  together  in  extra  session,  and  over  all  congressional  bills  to 
exercise  a  veto,  which  Congress  could  overthrow  only  by  a  two-thirds 
vote  in  both  houses.  Finally,  he  was  to  "take  care  that  the  laws  be 
faithfully  executed."  It  was  the  duty  of  the  Vice  President  to  pre 
side  over  the  sessions  of  the  Senate,  and  in  case  of  the  death,  resig 
nation,  removal,  or  inability  of  the  President  to  serve,  to  act  as 
President. 

As  a  concession  to  the  Southern  States,  the  power  of  Congress  to 
prohibit  the  importation  of  slaves  into  the  country  was  not  to  be 
operative  till  1808.  Congress  was  forbidden  to  levy  an  Minor 
export  tax,  but  was  allowed  to  levy  an  import  tax  and  to  compromises, 
exercise  other  designated  powers,  such  as  to  borrow  money,  to  regu 
late  commerce  between  the  states,  to  establish  uniform  rules  of  naturali 
zation,  to  coin  money,  to  establish  post  offices,  to  grant  patents  and 
copyrights,  to  declare  war,  to  raise  and  support  armies,  to  provide  and 
maintain  a  navy,  etc. 

The  Supreme  Court  was  the  most  original  creation  of  the  convention, 
and  is  the  feature  of  the  federal  government  of  the  United  States  that 
has  elicited  most  admiration  from  other  nations.  The  The  Supreme 
delegates  themselves  regarded  the  national  tribunal  as  Court- 
the  weakest  spot  in  their  scheme,  whereas  the  electoral  colleges, 
which  have  failed  of  their  original  purpose,  they  looked  upon  as  one 
of  the  strongest  features  of  the  Constitution. 

The  Constitution  provided  methods  for  its  own  amendment.  An 
amendment  might  originate  in  either  one  of  two  ways;  either  two- 
thirds  of  both  houses  of  Congress  might  propose  one,  or  one  might 


176  ORGANIZATION  OF  THE   UNITED   STATES 

be  proposed  by  a  national  convention,  called  for  the  purpose  by 
Amendment  Congress,  on  the  application  of  two-thirds  of  the  states. 
of  the  Consti-  Ratification  of  a  proposed  amendment  required  a  vote  of 
three-fourths  of  the  states,  acting  either  through  their 
legislatures  or  through  special  conventions  called  for  the  purpose. 

The  convention  adjourned  September  17,  1787,  after  thirty-nine 
of  its  members  had  subscribed  their  names  to  the  new  instrument. 
Ratification  By  its  own  provision,  when  ratified  by  nine  states,  the 
of  the  Constitution  was  to  go  into  effect  among  those  states. 

Within  less  than  four  months  after  the  adjournment  of 
the  convention  four  states  had  ratified  the  Constitution,  and  within  a 
year's  time  all  the  states  save  North  Carolina  and  Rhode  Island  had 
added  their  approval.  The  vote  in  Delaware,  New  Jersey,  and 
Georgia  was  unanimous,  but  the  close  vote  of  187  to  168  in  Massa 
chusetts,  and  89  to  79  in  Virginia,  reveals  the  reluctance  of  the  large 
states  to  part  with  the  preponderance  of  power  which  they  feared  they 
would  lose  under  the  new  plan.  The  vote  in  New  York  stood  30  to  27. 

In  New  York  the  victory  for  the  Constitution  was  largely  due  to 
The  "Fed-  Alexander  Hamilton,  who  loyally  accepted  the  plan, 
eralist."  though,  as  framed,  it  was  contrary  to  his  own  ideas.  He 

made  powerful  speeches  for  it,  and  in  connection  with  Madison  and 
Jay,  wrote  in  its  behalf  the  " Federalist,"  a  collection  of  essays  which 
are  to  this  day  a  classic  in  the  interpretation  of  the  Constitution.  That 
such  men  as  Samuel  Adams,  John  Hancock,  Elbridge  Gerry,  Patrick 
Henry,  and  Richard  Henry  Lee  were  in  opposition  to  the  adoption  of 
the  new  government  is  abundant  evidence  of  the  difficulty  that  must 
have  been  encountered  in  reaching  a  decision;  and  the  fact  of  the 
adhesion  of  these  men  to  the  losing  minority  explains  their  practical 
disappearance  at  this  time  from  national  politics. 

North  Carolina,  the  twelfth  state  to  approve  the  Constitution, 
reached  her  decision  a  little  over  six  months  after  the  new  government 
The  delay  of  went  into  effect,  while  Rhode  Island  delayed  her  entrance 
SiTand"0"  into  tne  United  States  of  America  six  months  longer. 
Rhode  Not  till  Congress  was  on  the  point  of  levying  a  tariff  duty 

Island.  against  her,  as  against  an  outsider,  did  she  yield. 

The  United  States  of  America  under  the  new  organization  con 
stituted  a  federal  government,  in  which  the  various  states  combined 
for  the  performance  of  certain  functions  in  common,  while 
nature  of          reserving  to  themselves  separately  all  rights  and  powers 

the  new  not  expressly  given  over  to  the  new  central  government 

government  °  .  .  ,         ,. 

by  the  terms  of  the  Constitution.  Foreseeing  the  dis 
putes  and  conflicts  that  would  necessarily  arise  under  such  a  system  of 


FAILURE  OF  THE  ARTICLES  OF  CONFEDERATION          177 

federal  and  state  governments,  even  its  advocates  wondered  if  the 
national  government  could  long  survive  with  the  state  governments 
still  active  and  vigorous,  or  if  the  one  must  not  inevitably  overshadow 
the  other.  There  were  the  seeds  of  other  conflicts  in  the  threefold 
nature  of  the  national  government  itself.  It  seemed  unavoidable  that 
the  President,  Congress,  and  the  Supreme  Court  should  disagree  as 
to  their  respective  rights  and  encroach  upon  one  another's  powers. 
The  ultimate  success  of  the  new  Constitution  was  by  no  means  assured. 
Only  time  could  tell  how  the  experiment  would  work. 

GENERAL  REFERENCES 

CHANNING,  United  States,  III;  FISKE,  Critical  Period;  McM ASTER,  United  States,  I; 
A.  C.  MCLAUGHLIN,  Confederation  and  Constitution;  B.  A.  HINSDALE,  Old  Northwest; 
WINSOR,  Westward  Movement;  ROOSEVELT,  Winning  of  the  West;  TURNER,  Western 
State  Making,  American  Historical  Review,  VIII;  M.  FARRAND,  Records. 

SPECIAL   TOPICS 

1.  THE  NEWBURG  ADDRESS.     Contemporaries,  III,  122-125;  FISKE,  Critical  Period, 
108-112. 

2.  THE  RECEPTION  OF  JOHN  ADAMS  BY  GEORGE  III.     Contemporaries,  III,  172-1 76. 

3.  THE  ORDINANCE  or  1787.     Epochs,  IV,  38-44;  B.  A.  HINSDALE,  Old  Northwest, 
255-269;   ROOSEVELT,  Winning  of  the   West,  III,  253-269;   Source  Book,   169-172; 
SPARKS,  Expansion,  118-158. 

4.  THE  CONSTITUTIONAL  CONVENTION.     Epochs,  IV,  31-38;  M.  FARRAND,  Framing 
of  the  Constitution;  AVERY,  United  States,  VI,  414-437;  Contemporaries,  III,  198-232. 

5.  THE  ADOPTION  or  THE  CONSTITUTION.     Old  South  Leaflets,  IV,  99,  and  V,  6; 
FISKE,  Critical  Period,  306-350;  H.  W.  ELSON,  Side  Lights,  25-53;  HARDING,  Orations, 
47-121;  AVERY,  United  States,  VII,  1-13;  Source  Book,  172-180;  Contemporaries,  III, 
233-254. 

ILLUSTRATIVE  MATERIAL 

COOPER,  Pioneers;  J.  L.  ALLEN,  Choir  Invisible;  HALE,  East  and  West;  E.  BELLAMY, 
The  Duke  of  Stockbridge. 

SUGGESTIVE  QUESTIONS 

Did  the  same  body  frame  the  Ordinance  of  1787  and  the  Constitution  of 
the  United  States?  What  were  the  arguments  for  and  against  the  Constitution? 
How  did  the  powers  of  the  national  government  under  the  Confederation  differ 
from  those  of  the  present  national  government?  What  was  the  influence  of  the 
western  lands  on  the  formation  of  the  Constitution?  What  were  the  favorable  and 
the  unfavorable  points  of  the  Articles  of  Confederation?  What  is  meant  by  seces 
sion?  What  manifestations  of  the  spirit  of  secession  were  there  before  1789?  Give 
instances  of  the  weakness  of  government  under  the  Confederation.  Show  the  impor 
tance  of  the  Mississippi  Valley  in  American  history.  What  did  Rhode  Island  and 
North  Carolina  gain  by  entering  the  Union?  Why  did  not  the  Congress  of  the  Con 
federation  undertake  to  make  the  new  Constitution?  Why  has  the  period  from  1783 


178  ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  UNITED   STATES 

to  1789  been  called  the  "critical  period"  ?  How  did  an  act  of- Maryland  lead  up  to 
the  Constitution?  What  provisions  of  the  treaty  of  peace  of  1 783  were  not  carried 
out  for  a  number  of  years?  What  were  the  Virginia  and  the  New  Jersey  plans  in 
the  constitutional  convention?  Describe  the  powers  of  the  President  and  Congress 
under  the  Constitution.  Describe  the  compromises  of  the  Constitution.  Compare 
the  relation  existing  between  Great  Britain  and  Massachusetts  before  1760,  with 
the  relation  sustained  between  the  Congress  of  the  Confederation  and  the  North 
west  Territory. 


CHAPTER   XV 
THE    SUCCESS    OF    THE    NEW    CONSTITUTION,    1789-1801 

PRESIDENT  WASHINGTON'S  PART  IN  THE   ORGANIZATION  OF   THE 

GOVERNMENT 

IN  1789  George  Washington  entered  upon  a  new  phase  of  his  illus 
trious  career.  As  commander-in-chief  of  the  military  forces  he  had 
won  the  independence  of  the  country,  and  as  private 
citizen  during  the  national  government  of  the  Confedera-  Washington, 
tion  he  had  taken  a  leading  part  both  in  pointing  out  the 
weaknesses  of  that  government  and  in  securing  the  new 
government  of  the  Constitution.  Great  in  military  affairs  and  in 
private  life,  he  had  yet  to  prove  his  greatness  as  an  official  in  civil 
life.  If  there  had  been  a  national  office  of  importance  under  the 
Confederation,  undoubtedly  he  would  have  been  called  upon  to  fill 
it;  but  there  was  none.  The  new  government  of  the  Constitution 
created  such  an  office  in  the  presidency  of  the  United  States,  and  the 
people  unanimously  conferred  it  upon  Washington.  It  was  an  honor 
to  be  chosen  the  nation's  first  President,  and  a  double  honor  to  be 
chosen  unanimously.  Every  President  since  has  met  with  opposition. 
John  Adams  of  Massachusetts  was  elected  the  first  Vice  President. 

The  first  Wednesday  in  March,  1789,  fixed  upon  by  the  old  Congress 
as  the  date  for  the  beginning  of  the  new  government,  came 
in  this  year  upon  the  fourth  of  the  month,  but  through  organization 
delays  incident  to  the  difficulties  of  travel  the  new  House 
of  Representatives  did  not  convene  till  the  first  of  April 
and  the  Senate  not  till  five  days  later.  After  the  organization  of  the 
two  houses  and  the  counting  of  the  electoral  vote  in  joint  session, 
Washington  was  officially  informed  of  his  election,  and  on  the  fifteenth 
of  April  set  out  from  Mount  Vernon  to  the'seat  of  government  in  New 
York.  His  journey  was  one  long  triumphal  tour,  in  the  course  of 
which  he  was  greeted  from  town  to  town  by  crowds  of  enthusiastic 
citizens,  and  honored  with  banquets,  toasts  and  addresses,  songs 
and  cheers.  At  Trenton,  New  Jersey,  where  twelve  years  before 
he  had  eluded  Cornwallis  by  his  strategy,  a  triumphal  arch  spanned 
the  way,  and  girls  dressed  in  white  strewed  his  path  with  flowers.  He 

I7Q 


i8o  ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES 

arrived  in  New  York  on  the  twenty-third  of  April,  and  on  the  thirtieth 

he  was  inaugurated. 

The  oath  of  office  was  administered  bef ore  a  large  crowd  of  people 
-..-.  .:  •..•.•..;:.      v, .     -  • . .     . .  .      .    •.      ;.  .  .       -    ;  -.--.-.:.-.. 

lowing    impressive  words: 

"I  do  solemnly  swear  that  I  will  faithfully  execute  die 
office  ^  President  of  the  United  Slates,  and  win,  to  the 
best  of  my  ability,  preserve,  protect,  and  defend  the  Constitution  of 


the  United  States."  In  the  inaugural  message,  delivered  later  to  the 
Senators  and  Representatives,  the  new  President  displayed  the  devout 
spirit  which  was  one  of  the  characteristics  of  his  greatness,  when  he 
reverently  proclaimed,  "It  would  be  peculiarly  improper  to  omit  in  this 
first  official  act  my  fervent  supplications  to  that  Almighty  Being,  who 
rules  over  the  universe,  who  presides  in  the  councils  of  the  nations,  and 
whose  providential  aids  can  supply  even'  human  defect,  that  his  bene 
diction  may  consecrate  to  the  liberties  and  happiness  of  the  people  of  the 
United  States,  a  government  instituted  by  themselves  for  these  essen 
tial  purposes,  and  may  enable  every  instrument  employed  in  its  admin 
istration  to  execute  with  success  the  functions  allotted  to  its  charge." 
The  new  government  set  itself  at  once  to  the  important  task  of 
organization.  The  President  was  able  to  find  little  in  the 
past  history  of  the  country  to  guide  him  in  the  conduct 
of  the  affairs  of  his  novel  office,  but  was  obliged  every 
day  to  make  precedents  of  more  or  less  importance  for  his  successors 


SUCCESS  OF  THE   NEW   CONSTITUTION 


187 


in  the  presidential  chair.  Some  of  his  customs  have  been  followed 
and  some  have  been  discontinued.  It  was  rumored  at  the  time  that 
he  desired  as  his  formal  title.  "His  Highness,  the  President  of  the 


_ 


From  the  Statue  by  H.  K.  Brown,  Union  Square,  New  Yotk. 

United  States  of  America  and  the  Protector  of  the  Rights  of  the 
Same,"  which  his  countrymen  soon  shortened  to  "Mr.  President. " 
He  delivered  his  messages  in  person  to  the  joint  session  of  the  two 
houses  of  Congress,  and  in  formal  audience  in  his  own  quarters  re 
ceived  their  reply.  To  the  treaties  which  he  negotiated  he  at  first 


182 


ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  UNITED   STATES 


received  "the  advice  and  consent"  of  the  Senate  in  person  in  the 
senate  chamber.     These  practices  were  later  discontinued. 


NEW  YORK'S  SECOND  CITY  HALL,  FEDERAL  HALL 

Erected  1700,  at  Wall  and  Broad  Streets.  Here  George  Washington  was  inaugurated  first 
president  of  the  United  States,  April  30,  1789,  and  here  the  Congress  of  the  United  States  met 
till  the  removal  of  the  National  Capital  to  Philadelphia. 

Washington  was  not  so  confirmed  in  his  own  self-esteem  that  he 
refused  to  consult  others.  The  secretaries  or  the  heads  of  the  various 
executive  departments,  who  were  after  all  only  the  chief  clerks  of  the 
President,  he  often  summoned  to  meet  with  him  in  private  consulta- 


SUCCESS  OF  THE  NEW  CONSTITUTION 


183 


tion.     Such  cabinet  meetings  were  required  neither  by  the  Constitu 
tion  nor  by  Congress,  but  as  a  matter  of  personal  assist-    The  cabinet 
ance  and  as  a  means  of  efficiency  the  custom  proved  of    meeting- 
great  value  to  Washington  as  it  has  to  every  succeeding  President. 
Washington's    choice    of    secretaries    was    most    happy.     Thomas 

Jefferson,  the   Secretary    of 
State,    was    a     statesman    of 

long  experience. 
A  *    ^u       u      •       •          Thomas 
At   the   beginning    Jefferson, 

of  his  career  he  |teactreetary  of 
had  been  a  useful 
member  of  the  legislature  of 
Virginia;  as  a  member  of  the 
Second  Continental  Congress 
he  wrote  the  Declaration  of 
Independence;  as  governor  of 
Virginia  during  a  part  of  the 
Revolutionary  War  he  led  his 
state  in  the  abolition  of  several 
time-honored  abuses,  such  as 
the  right  of  primogeniture,  the 
law  of  entail,  and  certain  relig 
ious  restrictions;  and  as  a 
member  of  the  Congress  of  the 
Confederation  he  interested 
himself  in  the  formation  of  the 
Northwest  Territory,  although 
when  the  Ordinance  of  1787 
was  passed  he  was  no  longer 
a  member  of  that  body,  but  minister  to  France. 

Alexander  Hamilton,  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  who  was  only 
thirty-two  years  of  age  in  1789,  had  already  been  prominent  in  the 
movement  for  the  formation  and  adoption  of  the  Constitu-    Alexander 
tion.     He  was  an  immigrant  from  the  island  of  Nevis  in    Hamilton, 
the  British  West  Indies,  a  graduate  of  King's  College,  now    the*6 
Columbia  University,  a  veteran  of  the  late  war,  and  an  able    Treasury, 
lawyer  and  practical  politician.     In  his  difficult  post  at  the  head  of  the 
Department  of  the  Treasury  he  proved  to  be  one  of  the  greatest  secre 
taries  ever  selected  by  any  President.     His  differences  with  his  col 
league  Jefferson  over  the  interpretation  of  the  Constitution  occasioned 
many  a  debate  in  that  famous  cabinet,  but  Washington  proved  an  adept 
in  managing  his  unruly  though  brilliant  advisers.     General  Henry  Knox 

13 


THOMAS  JEFFERSON 


1 84 


ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES 


The  part 
played  by 
the  members 
of  the  con 
stitutional 
convention. 


of  Massachusetts  became  Secretary  of  War,  and  Edmund  Randolph 
of  Virginia  Attorney  General. 

As  was  natural,  it  was  the  friends  of  the  Constitution  who  were  in 

control  of  affairs   under   the 

new  regime.     Washington 

had   been   president    of    the 

convention   of   1787,  and 

Hamilton  and  Randolph 
members  of  that  famous  body;  seven  of 
the  members  of  the  convention  became 
Senators  in  the  new  Congress  which  they 
had  helped  to  create,  five  more  became 
members  of  the  House  of  Representatives, 
while  six  others  made  up  the  entire  mem 
bership  of  the  new  Supreme  Court. 


ALEXANDER  HAMILTON 

After  an  engraving  by  J.  Rogers  from 
the  Talleyrand  Miniature. 


THE   PART  OF   CONGRESS   IN  THE  OR 
GANIZATION  OF  THE  GOVERNMENT 

Like  the  President,  Congress  was  called 
upon  at  the  start  to  make  various  impor- 
The  tariff  tant  decisions  concerning  pro- 
law-  cedure,  the  powers  of  its  officials,  its  own  powers,  and  the 

relations  of  the  two  houses  to  one  another  and  to  the  President.  Com 
mittees  in  the  two  houses  were  first  chosen  by  the  houses  themselves, 
though  after  a  short  time  this  function  in  the  House  of  Representatives 
was  given  over  to  the  Speaker,  in  whose  hands  it  was  to  remain  for 
more  than  a  hundred  years.  The  most  important  contributions  made 
by  Congress  to  the  organization  of  the  new  government  were  contained 
in  a  series  of  laws.  First,  in  order  to  secure  an  adequate  revenue  to 
pay  the  expenses  of  the  government,  on  July  4,  1789,  it  exercised  its 
power  "to  lay  and  collect  taxes,  duties,  imposts  and  excises,"  by 
passing  as  one  of  its  first  measures  a  general  tariff,  called  "  An  Act  for 
the  Encouragement  and  Production  of  Manufactures,"  imposing 
duties  on  manufactured  goods  imported  into  the  country.  This  was 
a  tariff  act  of  the  same  nature  as  the  Molasses  Act,  the  Sugar  Act,  and 
the  Townshend  Acts  of  the  colonial  period,  which  in  their  day  had 
roused  the  Americans  to  vigorous  opposition.  Now,  however,  it  was 
taxation  by  the  people's  own  representatives.  Charged  with  the 
responsibility  of  administering  their  own  affairs,  the  Americans  were 
glad  to  resort  to  the  old  tax,  especially  in  the  crisis  of  starting  their  new 
government,  when  the  political  expediency  of  laying  but  slight  finan 
cial  burdens  directly  on  the  people  was  strongly  to  be  considered.  The 


SUCCESS  OF  THE  NEW  CONSTITUTION  185 

indirect  tax  of  the  tariff  was  paid  first  by  the  importer,  who  passed 
the  burden  on  to  the  public,  so  that  all  classes  bore  their  share  of  the 
tax  in  the  increased  prices  which  they  paid  in  the  markets  for  imported 
goods.  There  were  no  gatherers  of  this  tax  outside  the  legal  ports  of 
entry,  nothing  to  suggest  a  general  tax.  Had  the  people  of  1789  been 
called  upon  to  contribute  directly  out  of  their  own  pockets  to  official 
taxgatherers  in  every  town  for  the  support  of  the  new  national  govern 
ment,  popular  dissatisfaction  would  have  resulted  and  the  United 
States  of  America  might  have  had  a  bitter  and  perhaps  unsuccessful 
struggle  for  existence. 

Men  argued  for  the  new  tax  in  the  debates  in  Congress  as  they  have 
argued  for  the  tariff  since,  not  only  on  the  ground  that  the  measure 
would  produce  a  revenue  but  also  that  it  was  proper  to    Arguments 
foster  infant  manufacturing  industries  by  national  legis-    for  the 
lation;  in  this  way  the  legislature  could  encourage  the 
country  to  become  a  self-supporting  unit,  able  to' produce  all  it  required 
for  its  own  consumption  and  capable  in  time  of  war  of  maintaining 
itself  without  importations  from  abroad.     The  low  rates  of  the  first 
act,  in  no  case  over  fifteen  per  cent  ad  valorem,  were  slightly  raised  in 
1790  and  again  in  1792.     Congress  hoped  that  under  the  new  tariff, 
manufacturing,  which  was  still  almost  entirely  confined  to  the  homes  of 
the  people,  would  develop  on  a  larger  scale. 

An  excise  tax,  which  is  a  tax  imposed  on  goods  of  domestic  produc 
tion,  was  levied  on  the  manufacture  of  distilled  spirits.   From  all  sources, 
from  the  tariff,  the  excise,  and  the  sale  of  public  lands  in    Success  ^ 
the  West,  the  national  revenue  for  the  year  1792  exceeded    the  national 
$3,000,000.     In  view  of  the  inability  of  the  Congress  of 
the  Confederation  to  impose  any  tax  at  all,  this  financial  record,  of  the 
new  government  under  the  Constitution  was  encouraging. 

A  part  of  the  new  revenue  was  devoted  to  meeting  the  national 
obligations  of  $12,000,000  due  in  France  and  in  Holland,  in  regard  to 
which  all  were  agreed  that  perfect  faith  must  be  kept.     As    payjng  off 
to  the  $40,000,000  or  more  of  the  domestic  debt  there  was    the  national 
disagreement.     This   indebtedness   was   in   the   form   of 
certificates  payable  to  the  holders,  issued  during  the  financial  stress  of 
the  late  war  and  during  the  days  of  the  Confederation.     As  is  invari 
ably  the  case  with  such  money,  these  certificates  had  depreciated  in 
value  as  it  became  evident  to  the  people  from  day  to  day  that  the 
government  of  the  Confederation  could  not  possibly  pay  them  at  their 
face  value,  and  they  were  now  bandied  about  by  speculators  for  a  few 
cents  on  the  dollar.     Secretary  Hamilton  proposed  to  Congress  to  pay 
the  certificates  at  their  full  face  value,  even  though  in  most  cases  the 


i86  ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  UNITED   STATES 

benefit  would  accrue  not  to  the  original  creditors,  who  had  come  for 
ward  to  help  the  government  with  their  money  in  the  time  of  need, 
but  to  the  speculators.  He  contended  that  only  in  this  way  could 
the  government  maintain  the  public  faith  and  reassure  its  future 
creditors.  Congress  accepted  his  view,  agreed  to  meet  the  interest 
promptly,  and  formulated  a  plan  to  pay  the  principal,  with  the  happy 
result  that  the  securities  were  soon  quoted  at  par. 

The  debts  of  the  various  states,  amounting  to  $20,000,000,  incurred 
for  the  common  good  during  the  Revolution,  Hamilton  proposed  to  Con 
gress  to  assume  in  the  name  of  the  general  government  and 

Assumption  -     -.  ,         ,  „ 

of  the  state  pay  out  of  the  national  treasury.  In  view  of  the  patriotic 
motives  of  tne  states  in  advancing  this  money,  the  pro 
posal  seemed  fair,  although  objection  arose  in  those  states 
which,  like  Virginia,  had  already  paid  off  a  part  of  the  debt  out  of  their 
own  funds.  It  was  shrewd  policy  to  transfer  to  the  United  States 
in  this  way  the  support  of  the  moneyed  classes,  who  would  greatly 
desire  the  success  of  the  national  government,  if  it  was  to  become 
responsible  for  the  payment  of  the  state  certificates  which  they  held. 
When  Congress  hesitated,  Hamilton,  by  a  private  agreement  with 
Jefferson,  won  a  few  votes  from  Virginia  for  assumption  of  the  debts, 
in  return  for  which  he  agreed  to  find  an  equal  number  of  northern  votes 
for  a  plan  to  locate  the  national  capital  in  the  South,  on  the  banks  of 
the  Potomac.  Both  plans  then  went  through. 

After  remaining  for  one  year  in  New  York,  the  seat  of  the  national 
government  was  moved  by  Congress  to  Pniladelphia  for  ten  years, 
The  new  na-  while  the  present  site  was  being  prepared  in  the  wilds 
?t°Wash?n£?  between  Maryland  and  Virginia.  This  selection  of  a 
ton,  District  spot  in  the  wilderness  for  the  permanent  seat  of  govern- 
of  Columbia.  ment  mav  geem  extraordinary,  but  history  shows  that 
it  is  always  difficult  under  a  federal  form  of  government  to  agree 
on  the  location  of  the  national  capital.  In  1900,  when  the  British 
colonies  in  Australia  formed  the  union  of  the  Commonwealth  of 
Australia,  provision  was  made  for  the  location  of  the  national  capital 
in  an  entirely  uninhabited  region,  and  this  capital  is  now  in  process  of 
construction.  The  Canadian  states,  forming  the  federation  of  the 
Dominion  of  Canada  in  1867,  appealed  to  Queen  Victoria  to  select  their 
capital  city  for  them,  while  the  new  Union  of  South  Africa,  formed  in 
1909,  had  so  much  difficulty  with  the  same  problem,  that  it  divided  its 
central  government  into  a  number  of  parts  and  located  each  part  in 
a  separate  city. 

So  undeveloped  were  the  industrial  and  commercial  resources  of 
the  United  States  in  1789  that  only  three  or  four  banks  were  to  be 


SUCCESS  OF  THE  NEW  CONSTITUTION  187 

found  in  the  whole  country,  and  these  were  very  small.  Secretary 
Hamilton,  confident  of  the  final  success  of  his  policy  of  The  ^^ 
building  up  manufacturing  and  commerce  through  the  Bank  of  the 
tariff  and  the  other  financial  measures  of  Congress,  pro- 
posed  to  Congress  to  give  further  aid  to  these  lines  of 
industry  by  the  creation  of  a  national  bank  with  a  capital  of  $10,000,000. 
The  government  was  to  subscribe  one-fifth  of  the  capital  stock  and 
was  to  have  the  right  to  require  of  the  managers  of  the  bank  periodical 
statements  of  its  condition.  The  bank  was  to  aid  the  government 
in  making  loans  and  in  the  collection  of  taxes,  and  was  to  issue  its 
notes  to  circulate  as  money  of  uniform  value  throughout  the  Union. 
In  return  for  these  services  of  the  bank  to  the  government,  the  bank 
was  to  enjoy  the  privilege  of  keeping  the  money  of  the  United  States 
on  deposit  in  its  vaults  and  of  lending  it  out  at  interest,  just  as  it 
loaned  out  at  interest  the  money  of  any  private  depositor. 

At  a  loss  to  know  whether  or  not  to  sign  the  bank  bill  as  it  came  to 
him  from  Congress,  President  Washington  appealed  to  his  two  Secre 
taries,  Hamilton  and  Jefferson,  for  their  written  opinions.    The  consti_ 
Hamilton,  who  advocated  loose  construction  of  the  Consti-    tutionaiity  of 
tution,  maintained  that  it  was  proper  for  Congress  to 
read  between  the  lines  of  the  Constitution  and  to  do  things  found 
there    only  by   implication,  while   Jefferson,  who   believed  in   strict 
construction,  declared  that  Congress  had  power  to  do  nothing  which 
was  not  specifically  authorized  by  the  plain  words  of  the  Constitution. 

Hamilton  rested  his  ardent  support  of  the  bank  bill  on  the  clause 
of  the  Constitution  which  says  that  Congress  shall  have  power  "to 
lay  and  collect  taxes,  duties,  imposts  and  excises,  to  pay  Hamilton 
the  debts  and  provide  for  the  common  defense  and  general  versus 
welfare  of  the  United  States."  Rightly  construed  by  the  Jef 
rules  of  English  grammar,  these  words  meant  to  Hamilton  that  Con 
gress  had  the  power  to  provide  for  the  general  welfare,  while  to  Jef 
ferson  they  meant  only  that  Congress  had  the  power,  not  to  provide 
for  the  general  welfare,  but  to  lay  such  taxes  as  would  themselves 
provide  for  the  general  welfare.  The  word  "necessary,"  in  the 
necessary  and  proper  clause,  "The  Congress  shall  have  power:  — To 
make  all  laws  which  shall  be  necessary  and  proper  for  carrying  into 
execution  the  foregoing  powers,"  in  the  mind  of  Hamilton  meant 
"convenient"  or  "conducive  to,"  but  to  Jefferson  "absolutely  indis 
pensable."  The  former  contended  that  when  Congress  was  given  the 
power,  for  example,  "to  lay  and  collect  taxes,"  it  must  also  by  impli 
cation  possess  the  right  to  choose  the  means  for  carrying  out  its 
constitutional  powers,  whereas  the  latter  denied  this  conclusion. 


i8S  ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES 

Washington  accepted  the  views  of  Hamilton  and  signed  the  bank 
bill,  and  his  decision  on  this  question  of  how  the  Constitution  is  to  be 
Washington's  construed  has  in  general  been  followed  ever  since.  The 
decision.  national  government  to-day  is  built  up  on  the  Hamiltonian 
theory  of  loose  or  broad  construction  of  the  Constitution.  For  exam 
ple,  from  the  power  to  " establish  post  offices  and  post  roads"  Congress 
derives  its  power  to  punish  those  who  rob  the  mails,  and  from  the 
power  to  "regulate  commerce  .  .  .  among  the  several  states"  its 
authority  to  control  the  bridges  that  span  the  navigable  streams  and 
to  regulate  railroad  rates. 

In  another  important  act  Congress  passed  by  a  two-thirds  vote 

in  each  house  and  sent  to  the  states  for  ratification  a  "bill  of  rights," 

containing    safeguards    against    encroachments    by    the 

amendments     central  government  upon  personal  rights  and  liberties, 

°Lth5  Con"       similar  to  those  in  the  state  constitutions.     These  were 
stitution. 

ratified  by  the  states  and  appended  to  the  Constitution  in 
the  first  ten  amendments.  The  absence  of  these  provisions  had  been 
one  of  the  chief  objections  to  the  Constitution  when  it  was  before  the 
people  of  the  states  for  ratification,  and  their  final  incorporation  as 
amendments  added  to  the  general  satisfaction  with  the  new  instrument. 

Congress  passed  other  important  legislation.  It  created  the  sub 
ordinate  branches  of  the  executive  department,  the  heads  of  which 
other  im-  were  aPP°mted  by  the  President  and  consulted  as  his 
portant  acts  cabinet ;  passed  a  law,  much  after  the  fashion  of  the  old 

ongress.  navigation  laws  of  Great  Britain,  to  give  to  the  vessels 
of  the  United  States  a  monopoly  of  the  coastwise  shipping  trade 
of  the  country;  and  passed  the  Judiciary  Act,  which  has  remained 
but  little  changed  to  the  present  day,  outlining  in  detail  the  powers 
of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  and  the  manner  in  which 
appeals  may  be  carried  to  this  tribunal  from  the  courts  of  the  states. 
The  Ordinance  of  1787  for  the  government  of  the  Northwest  Territory 
was  reenacted.  The  Coinage  Act  of  1792  set  up  a  bimetallic  cur 
rency,  by  which  both  gold  and  silver  were  to  be  coined;  for  sums  less 
than  a  dollar,  the  decimal  system  was  adopted. 

THE   PART   OF   THE    SUPREME    COURT   IN   ORGANIZATION 

John  Jay  was  the  first  Chief  Justice  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the 

United  States.  Though  this  tribunal  was  of  fundamental 
The  influence  .  , -,  -,  c  .  a 

Of  the  importance  in  the  new  scheme  ot  government,  its  inrlu- 

Supreme          ence  was  not  at  first  apparent,  inasmuch  as  it  could  ren 
der  decisions  only  when  specific  cases  were  submitted  to 
it,  and  these  did  not  immediately  arise.     The  first  great  decision  of  the 


SUCCESS  OF  THE  NEW  CONSTJTU^GN  «      189 

court  bearing  directly  on  the  powers  of  the  centra ^government  was  not 
made  till  1803.  The  tribunal  refused  to  give 'mere  advice.  On  "one 
occasion,  when  the  Executive  submitted  to  it  a  list  of  twenty-nine 
different  questions  for  its  opinion,  it  respectfully  declined  to  answer. 
On  another  occasion,  when  the  legislative  branch  laid  on  them  certain 
duties  in  regard  to  soldiers'  pensions,  the  members  of  the  court  likewise 
refused  to  comply,  taking  the  position  that  it  would  be  better  for  the 
new  government  if  they  should  confine  themselves  strictly  to  judicial 
duties.  An  early  decision,  given  in  favor  of  a  citizen  of  another  state 
against  the  state  of  Georgia,  led  to  a  general  feeling  that  sovereign 
states  ought  not  to  be  subject  to  suit  brought  by  private  individuals; 
and  in  response  to  this  sentiment  arose  the  eleventh  amendment  to 
the  Constitution,  forbidding  suits  against  a  state  by  citizens  of  other 
states  or  of  foreign  states. 

THE  RISE  OF  NEW  POLITICAL  PARTIES 

In  addition  to  the  troublesome  question  of  how  to  interpret  the  Con 
stitution,  raised  by  the  Federalist  measures  of  organization,  there  was 
political  cleavage  along  another  line.  The  instinctive  Aristocrac 
democratic  tendencies  of  the  masses  of  the  people  were 
arrayed  against  the  aristocratic  views  of  some  of  the  leaders.  Wash 
ington  was  an  aristocrat  from  the  sole  of  his  buckled  shoe  to  the  top  of 
his  powdered  wig;  few  could  be  intimate  with  him.  As  President  he 
gave  grand  receptions,  at  which  he  and  Mrs.  Washington  received  the 
guests  with  a  stately  bow  from  a  raised  dais;  he  rode  abroad  in  state, 
and  was  accused  by  some  of  aping  royalty.  His  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury  declared  at  a  banquet,  "Your  people,  sir,  your  people  are  a 
great  beast,"  while  John  Adams  asserted  his  belief  in  the  "rule  of  the 
rich,  the  well-born,  and  the  able."  In  general,  these  men  and  their 
political  supporters  believed  in  a  government  of  "  those  who  alone 
from  education,  fortune,  character,  and  principle  are  entitled  to  com 
mand."  The  practical  working  of  this  theory  was  illustrated  in  the 
politics  of  the  state  of  Connecticut,  where  the  governor  and  the  council, 
together  with  the  corporation  of  Yale  College,  decided  the  policy  of  the 
Federalist  party,  which  was  the  controlling  party  of  the  state,  and 
gave  their  orders  to  the  yearly  meetings  of  the  clergy  of  the  Congrega 
tional  Church,  who  passed  them  on  to  the  individual  members  of  the 
party  in  every  parish.  The  common  man  was  not  consulted.  As 
in  the  days  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  what  with  property 
qualifications,  religious  qualifications,  and  educational  qualifications 
for  the  suffrage,  scarcely  one  man  in  five  throughout  the  country 
could  vote. 


SUCCESS  OF  THE  NEW  CONSTITUTION  191 

The  first  statesman  after  1789  to  object  successfully  to  this  ten 
dency  toward  aristocracy  was  Thomas  Jefferson,  who  held  the  view 
that  all  men,  not  merely  "the  rich,  the  well-born,  and  the 
able,"  should  have  the  right  to  vote,  to  belong  to  political 
parties,   and   to   hold   office.      "  Whenever   our   affairs   go   obviously 
wrong,"  he  wrote,  "the  good  sense  of  the  people  will  interpose  to 
set  them  right."     Back  of  Jefferson  were  the  democratic  instincts  of 
the  masses. 

These  differences  of  political  opinion  arising  after  the  unanimous 
election  of  Washington  in  1789  were  accompanied  by  a  violent  display 
of  partisanship.  Two  parties  had  been  created  by  the  The  Federai_ 
discussions  over  the  ratification  of  the  Constitution,  the  ists  and  the 
Federalists,  who  stood  for  the  ratification  of  the  new 
Constitution,  and  the  Anti-Federalists,  who  fought  the  erection  of  the 
new  government.  After  1789,  when  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution 
was  no  longer  a  question  at  issue,  the  problems  of  the  organization  of 
the  government  under  it  caused  a  new  alignment  of  parties.  The 
followers  of  Hamilton  favored  loose  construction  of  the  Constitution, 
a  strong  central  government,  and  a  restricted  suffrage,  and  retained  the 
name  of  Federalists;  Jefferson  and  his  partisans,  on  the  other  hand, 
opposed  these  principles  and  demanded  a  strict  construction  of  the 
Constitution,  were  jealous  for  the  rights  of  the  states  against  the  en 
croachments  of  the  central  government,  and  championed  democracy. 
This  party  of  Jefferson  was  first  known  as  Republican,  later  as  Demo 
cratic-Republican.  Into  it  were  gathered  many  of  the  old  Anti-Fed 
eralists  and  in  general  the  champions  of  the  masses,  while  the  wealthy 
and  conservative  tended  to  join  the  Federalists. 

With  the  organization  of  the  new  central  government  largely  accom 
plished,  the  people  were  called  upon  in  1792  for  a  second  time  to  elect 
a  President.  In  conformity  with  the  non-partisan  nature 
of  his  election  in  1788,  Washington  was  still  attempting 
to  give  to  the  country  a  non-partisan  administration; 
but  with  Hamilton  and  Jefferson  wrangling  with  one 
another  in  the  cabinet,  and  with  the  dissensions  between  the  two 
political  parties  waxing  hotter  every  day,  he  longed  for  retirement. 
The  need  of  his  strong  hand  at  the  helm,  however,  was  apparent  to  all, 
and  at  the  earnest  request  of  Hamilton,  Jefferson,  and  other  leaders, 
he  consented  to  accept  a  second  term  and  was  again  unanimously 
elected.  Vice  President  Adams  was  reflected  by  a  vote  of  77  to  50. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  election  of  members  of  the  House  of  Repre 
sentatives,  which  is  held  on  even  years  and  comes  in  the  year  of  the 
presidential  contest  and  in  the  middle  of  the  presidential  term,  was 


192  ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  UNITED   STATES 

conducted  this  year  on  party  lines  and  resulted  in  a  victory  for  the 
Democratic-Republicans. 

THE  MILITARY  POWER  OF  THE  NEW  GOVERNMENT 

In  the  administration  of  the  internal  affairs  of  the  country  in 
Washington's  second  term,  there  were  two  vigorous  and  highly  suc- 
The  cessful  exhibitions  of  the  military  powers  of  the  new 

Whisky  government.  The  first  test  came  in  1794  near  the  little 

town  of  Pittsburg  in  western  Pennsylvania,  on  the  occasion 
of  the  outbreak  of  the  so-called  Whisky  Rebellion  against  the  law  of 
Congress  laying  a  tax  on  the  manufacture  of  distilled  spirits.  Shut  off 
by  the  mountains  from  easy  communication  overland  with  the  eastern 
seaboard,  and  removed  by  hundreds  of  miles  from  access  to  the  ocean 
by  water  at  New  Orleans,  the  people  of  this  section  found  it  to  their 
advantage  to  distill  their  corn  into  whisky  before  seeking  a  market, 
thereby  reducing  its  bulk  and  facilitating  transportation.  As  corn 
was  their  leading  product,  the  Pennsylvania  frontiersmen  were  hard 
hit  by  the  tax.  They  tarred  and  feathered  the  tax-collectors  and  the 
tax  went  unpaid,  until  Washington  determined  to  use  extreme  measures. 
The  militia  of  the  states,  which  before  1789  had  recognized  no  obliga 
tions  save  to  their  own  states,  were  now  subject  to  the  call  of  the 
President.  The  question  arose  whether  they  would  respond,  if  called 
out  by  their  new  master  to  serve  against  their  fellow-citizens.  Wash 
ington  felt  keenly  the  seriousness  of  the  crisis,  as  he  well  knew  that  the 
new  government  would  be  plunged  into  a  dangerous  situation  if  the 
militia  of  the  states  refused  to  obey  his  orders.  All  doubts  on  the  sub 
ject  were  removed  when  the  militia  of  three  states,  fifteen  thousand 
strong,  responded  loyally,  and  marched  to  the  scene  of  the  trouble. 
The  rebellion  collapsed. 

A  second  demonstration  of  the  military  power  of  the  new  govern 
ment  was  afforded  in  the  same  year  by  a  successful  expedition  against 
Defeat  of  the  Indians  of  northwestern  Ohio.  The  first  settlements 
the  Indians  of  the  Ohio  Company  at  Marietta  and  at  other  points  in 
Ohio  had  undergone  the  usual  struggles  with  the  savages. 
General  Harmar,  sent  against  the  Ohio  Indians  in  1790  at  the  head 
of  fourteen  hundred  and  fifty  men,  and  General  St.  Clair  at  the  head  of 
about  the  same  number  in  1791,  had  been  put  to  rout.  The  victims  of 
the  scalping  knife  on  the  second  expedition  were  numbered  by  the  hun 
dreds.  Washington's  parting  words  to  St.  Clair  had  been,  "  You  know 
how  the  Indians  fight;  beware  of  a  surprise;"  but  St.  Clair  allowed 
himself  to  be  surprised.  Finally  in  1794  Washington  sent  out  General 
Anthony  Wayne,  the  hero  of  Stony  Point,  who  fought  a  decisive  battle 


SUCCESS  OF  THE  NEW  CONSTITUTION  193 

with  the  Indians  near  the  western  end  of  Lake  Erie  in  1794,  defeated 
them  badly,  devastated  their  country  for  miles  around  and  concluded 
a  peace  with  the  savages  of  the  whole  region.  "  Wayne,"  said  the 
Indians,  "we  cannot  surprise,  for  he  is  a  chief  who  never  sleeps." 


AN  EARLY  FRONTIER  FORT  IN  OHIO 

The  settlement  of  the  country  after  this  decisive  victory  proceeded 
so  rapidly  that  Ohio  was  ready  for  statehood  in  1802,  fourteen  years 
after  the  first  settlement.     The  somewhat  earlier  settle-    Rapid  settie_ 
ment  of   the   frontier  in  the   South  brought  Kentucky    ment  of 
into   the  Union  in    1792,  less   than   twenty  years   after 
Boone  had  reached  the  region,  and  Tennessee  in  1796,  less  than  thirty 
years  after  her  original  settlement. 

Following  the  excellent  precedent  set  by  the  Congress  of  the  Con 
federation  in  its  dealings  with  the  Ohio  Company,  the  new  Congress 
was  very  liberal  in  its  disposition  of  the  western  lands.  dig 

According  to  the  principle  which  had  governed  the  whites    position  of 
almost  from  their  first   advent  into    the  western   hemi-    Jhe  public 
sphere,    the   Indians   were   considered   to   have   no   per 
manent  jurisdiction,  that  is,  no  right  to  exercise  final  authority,  over 
the  territory  which  they  held;  nor  were  they  allowed  by  the  United 
States  to  dispose  of  their  lands  to  individuals.     They  gave  up  their 
lands  to  the  national  government  by  treaty,  and  the  white  settlers  made 
their  purchases  from  the  government.     The  lands  were  sold  by  the 
government  in  full  and  complete  ownership,  sometimes  to  speculators 
in  parcels  of  thousands  of  acres   and  sometimes   to  individuals  in 
small  farms. 

FOREIGN   AFFAIRS,  1789-1797 

The  foreign  affairs  of  the  national  government  did  not  assume 
serious  importance  till  the  beginning  of  Washington's  second  term, 
when,  at  the  outbreak  of  war  between  France  and  Great  Britain  in 


194  ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES 

1793,  they  suddenly  took  a  foremost  place  among  the  problems  of 
The  outbreak  state  and  held  that  position  for  the  next  twenty  years, 
of  war  be-  it  was  fortunate  that  the  new  nation  had  a  chance  to 
and  Great  get  well  grounded  before  the  outside  distractions  arose. 
Britain.  France  was  in  the  midst  of  that  great  upheaval  known  as 

the  French  Revolution;  the  king  had  been  deprived  of  his  powers,  de 
throned,  and  beheaded,  and  a  republic  set  up.  The  Declaration  of  the 
Rights  of  Man,  which  the  French  issued  early  in  their  struggle,  was  in 
its  own  words  a  solemn  declaration  of  "the  natural,  inalienable,  and 
sacred  rights  of  man."  "Men  are  born  and  remain  free  and  equal  in 
rights,"  ran  its  opening  article;  and  the  document  went  on  to  claim 
that  "  the  principle  of  all  sovereignty  resides  in  the  nation."  Such  a 
gospel  of  "liberty,  equality  and  fraternity"  did  not  accord  with  the 
monarchical  ideas  of  the  larger  part  of  Europe.  First  Prussia  and 
Austria  rose  up  in  opposition,  then  Great  Britain,  until  finally  prac 
tically  all  Europe  was  combined  to  crush  democracy  in  France. 

Both  Great  Britain  and  France  in  this  crisis  relied  largely  on  food 
supplies  from  the  United  States.  Trade  with  France  was  carried 

on  under  the  commercial  treaty  of  1778,  while  that  with 
of  fhe°United  Great  Britain  went  on  without  the  formal  sanction  of  a 
States  in  the  treaty.  When  the  news  of  the  European  wars  reached 

America  the  question  arose  whether  the  United  States 
should  continue  in  a  neutral  position,  friendly  to  the  British  and  the 
French  alike,  or  should  side  with  one  against  the  other.  The  mer 
chants  of  the  seaboard  preferred  the  former  course,  since  they  hoped 
thus  to  be  able  to  continue  selling  their  products  to  both  sides.  To 
them  neutral  commerce  in  time  of  war  meant  high  prices  for  their 
products  and  high  freight  rates  for  the  vessels  engaged  in  the  trade; 
and  at  the  alluring  prospect  the  ready  capital  of  the  country  turned 
away  from  the  manufacturing  industries,  which  it  had  been  one  of  the 
objects  of  the  tariff  law  to  foster,  and  sought  the  sea.  Manufacturing 
was  forced  to  wait  for  its  boom  till  this  profitable  neutral  commerce, 
arising  out  of  the  wars  in  Europe,  should  cease. 

War  in  Europe  was  no  sooner  started  than  France,  reminding  the 
people  of  the  United  States  of  the  treaty  of  alliance  of  1778,  under 
Citizen  which  she  had  assisted  them  to  win  their  freedom  from 

Genet.  Great  Britain,  set  up  the  claim  that  turn  about  was  fair 

play,  and  that  she  herself  was  now  in  trouble  and  required  their  help. 
To  push  her  claims  she  sent  Citizen  Genet  to  the  United  States  as  her 
minister  in  1793.  Genet  landed  at  Charleston,  South  Carolina,  and 
on  his  journey  to  Philadelphia  was  greeted  on  every  hand  with  enthu 
siasm  by  the  liberty-loving  Americans,  upon  whom  France's  Declara- 


SUCCESS  OF  THE  NEW  CONSTITUTION  195 

tion  of  the  Rights  of  Man  and  her  struggle  for  freedom  were  making 
a  profound  impression.  Among  the  new  minister's  first  acts  in  the 
land  of  liberty  were  the  enlistment  of  American  citizens  to  join  in  the 
wars  of  his  native  land,  the  commissioning  of  ships  in  American  ports 
to  sail  as  privateers  in  the  name  of  France,  and  finally  the  bringing  of 
captured  ships,  taken  from  the  British,  into  American  ports  for  judicial 
condemnation.  In  the  capital  at  Philadelphia,  Genet  proved  not 
half  so  shrewd  and  diplomatic  as  had  Franklin  in  Paris  fifteen  years 
before.  He  was  hasty  and  excitable;  he  insulted  Washington  and  his 
ministers,  made  extravagant  demands  for  instant  assistance  to  France, 
and  even  appealed  to  the  American  people  against  their  President. 

Washington  faced  the  question  calmly,  with  the  realization  that  it 
was  for  the  best  interests  of  the  United  States  to  cultivate  the  arts  of 
peace  rather  than  allow  herself  to  be  drawn  into  a  foreign  The  United 
war.  Some  brought  forward  the  argument  that  the  States 
treaty  with  the  old  French  monarchy  did  not  hold  with 
the  new  French  republic.  Others  maintained  that  even  if  it  did 
hold,  the  treaty  of  1778  was,  in  its  own  words,  a  "defensive  alliance," 
and  that  the  war  in  which  France  was  engaged  was  an  offensive  war. 
In  a  proclamation  the  President  declared  that  the  United  States  would 
be  neutral  in  the  struggle  between  France  and  Great  Britain.  Con 
gress  sustained  him  in  this  position  and  passed  a  law,  still  on  the 
statute  books,  forbidding  citizens  to  enlist  in  the  army  or  navy  of  a 
belligerent  state,  with  which  the  United  States  was  at  peace,  and 
prohibiting  the  fitting  out  in  the  ports  of  the  United  States  of  any 
vessel  designed  to  commit  hostilities  against  a  state  with  which  the 
United  States  was  at  peace.  These  rules  in  regard  to  neutrality  have 
since  been  adopted  by  the  leading  nations. 

Washington  vigorously  enforced  his  proclamation  and  requested 
France  to  withdraw  Genet  as  her  official  representative  in  the  United 
States.     The  impetuous  minister's  indiscretions  had  done    The  recall 
far  more  to  turn  sympathy  to  the  British  than  to  aid  the    of  Gen^t- 
cause  of  his  own  country. 

In  this  sudden   unpleasantness  between    France  and    the  United 
States,  Great  Britain  had  an  opportunity  to  attach  the  Americans  to 
her  own  side,  but  this  she  neglected  to  do.     She  still 
refused  to  withdraw  her  troops  from  the  northwest  posts    tudeSteward~ 
in  compliance  with  the  treaty  of  1783,  and  to  make  com-    ^e  United 
pensation  for  the  slaves  which  her  soldiers  had  carried 
off  during  the  late  war;  nor  would  she  consent  to  make  a  commercial 
treaty  formally  opening  her  own  ports  and  those  of  the  British  \\V-t 
Indies  to  the  commerce  of  the  United  States. 


196  ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  UNITED   STATES 

Both  Great  Britain  and  France  persisted  in  certain  objectionable 
practices  against  the  neutral  vessels  of  the  United  States  which  sought 
International  to  carr7  on  trade  with  the  enemy.  It  was  generally 
law  as  to  the  agreed  at  the  time  that  a  neutral  merchant  vessel  in  time 
neutrals  on  °f  war  might  bring  a  cargo  into  an  unblockaded  bellig- 

the  sea  in  erent  port,  but  that  a  belligerent  vessel  of  war  might 
time  of  war. 

stop  and  search  any  neutral  merchant  vessel  on  the  high 

seas,  and  if  she  found  thereon  certain  forbidden  goods  useful  in  the 
prosecution  of  war,  might  carry  her  off  to  a  prize  court,  where  both 
the  vessel  and  the  forbidden  goods  were  liable  to  confiscation.  Just 
what  should  'be  included  in  the  list  of  prohibited  goods,  called  contra 
band  of  war,  was  in  dispute.  Almost  the  only  goods  about  which  there 
was  general  agreement  were  munitions  of  war.  The  United  States,  as 
an  agricultural  nation,  contended  that  food  supplies  should  not  be 
considered  contraband,  while  Great  Britain,  to  keep  the  American 
supplies  away  from  France,  declared  them  contraband.  Furthermore 
Great  Britain  and  France  maintained  the  doctrine  of  a  paper  blockade, 
that  is,  that  one  belligerent  had  the  right  in  war,  merely  by  proclama 
tion,  to  prohibit  all  neutral  vessels,  whatsoever  their  cargo,  from 
trading  in  the  ports  of  the  other  belligerent,  and  to  attack  them  if  they 
attempted  to  do  so.  The  United  States,  on  the  other  hand,  claimed 
that  a  blockade  could  not  be  created  merely  by  proclamation,  but 
that  to  exist  at  all  it  must  be  made  effective  by  ships  of  war  on  guard 
at  the  blockaded  ports. 

The  warring  nations  refused  to  admit  that  the  goods  of  the  enemy 
on  a  neutral  ship  should  be  exempt  from  capture  and  insisted  that  they 
Other  cus-  nad  tne  right  to  seize  all  such  goods  whenever  they  could, 
toms  of  inter-  in  spite  of  the  position  which  the  United  States  generally 
iw'  took  in  the  treaties  of  this  time  that  "free  ships  make 
free  goods,"  excepting  contraband  of  war.  France  claimed  that  the 
goods  of  a  neutral  on  an  enemy's  ship  were  subject  to  seizure,  while 
the  United  States  and  Great  Britain  maintained  that  neutral  goods  on 
an  enemy's  ships,  except  contraband  of  war,  were  exempt  from  cap 
ture.  Great  Britain  further  contended  that,  when  a  nation  with 
colonies  closed  those  colonies  to  trade  with  the  vessels  of  outside  nations 
in  time  of  peace,  she  should  not,  upon  entering  into  war,  open  them 
suddenly  and  allow  neutral  vessels  to  carry  on  the  colonial  trade. 
This  was  the  so-called  rule  of  1756,  promulgated  by  Great  Britain  at 
the  opening  of  the  French  and  Indian  War,  to  prevent  France  from 
allowing  neutrals  to  carry  on  her  trade  with  the  French  West  Indies, 
which  in  time  of  peace  she  reserved  to  herself. 

From  time  immemorial  Great  Britain  had  been  in  the  habit,  in  time 


SUCCESS  OF  THE  NEW  CONSTITUTION  197 

of  war,  of  impressing,  that  is  forcing,  her  citizens  to  serve  in  her  navy. 
When,  now,  in  ihe  process  of  searching  the  neutral  ves-    impressment 
sels  of  the  United  States,  she  detected  the  presence  there    of  American 
of  supposed  British  subjects,  she  assumed  to  carry  on 
their  impressment  from  these  neutral  vessels;  and  France,  too,  indulged 
in  the  same  practice,  though  to  a  less  extent. 

While  international  law,  which  is  in  reality  not  law  at  all,  but 
simply  international  custom  determined  by  the  practices  of  civilized 
nations,  is  now  in  general  accord  with  the  contentions  of    international 
the  Americans,  at  that  time  both  the  British  and  the    law  on  the 
French  practices,  though  occasionally  objected  to  by  other    British  and 
European  nations,  had  the  sanction  of  usage.  the  French- 

Great  Britain  and  France  enforced  their  ideas  concerning  contra 
band  by  the  capture  of  American  vessels  carrying  these  goods,  and 
Great  Britain  sought  to  prevent  the  vessels  of  the  United    Bem  erent 
States  from  taking  part  in  the  trade  of  the  French  West    attacks  on  the 
Indies,    which    France    suddenly    opened    up    to    them,    ^ 
Within  a  short  time  each  belligerent  had  effected  many    United 
captures  of  the  helpless  vessels  of  the  United  States. 

Popular  indignation  in  the  United  States  rose  higher  against 
Great  Britain  than  against  France,  partly  because  of  the  sympathy 
felt  for  France  in  her  professions  of.  liberty,  partly  because  -Washington's 
the  British  captures  outnumbered  those  of  the  French,  decision  for 
but  mainly  because  of  the  passions  roused  by  the  Revolu-  peace* 
tionary  War.  To  curb  the  rising  war  feeling  against  the  British  and 
to  preserve  the  neutrality  to  which  he  was  committed,  Washington 
sent  John  Jay,  Chief  Justice  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United 
States,  to  Great  Britain  to  clear  the  atmosphere  if  possible  by  a  treaty. 
In  this  step  the  President  was  warmly  upheld  by  the  merchants 
of  the  country.  In  spite  of  the  many  captures  of  their  vessels,  the 
annual  foreign  commerce  of  the  United  States  merchants  increased 
from  $26,000,000  in  1793,  when  the  British-French  war  opened,  to 
$47,000,000  in  1795;  the  gains  of  the  merchants  were  outweighing 
their  losses,  and  fearful  that  war  between  the  United  States  and  Great 
Britain  would  cut  off  this  growing  neutral  trade,  they  gave  their  voice 
for  peace  and  for  any  honorable  method  of  maintaining  neutrality. 

According  to  the  treaty  negotiated  by  Jay,  Great  Britain  abandoned 
the  northwest  posts  and  removed  one  of  the  charges  against  her  that 
she  had  neglected   to   carry  out   the  provisions   of  the    The  Jay 
treaty  of   1783,   but  she  refused  compensation  for  the    treaty- 
slaves  she  had  carried  off.     One  of  the  two  charges  against  the  United 
States  for  failure  to  comply  with  the  treaty  of  1783  was  met  by  the 


198  ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  UNITED   STATES 

provision  that  a  commission  be  appointed  to  determine  the  amount  due 
on  the  old  debts  to  merchants  in  Great  Britain.  This  commission  was 
appointed  but  could  come  to  no  agreement,  and  by  a  treaty  in  1802 
the  United  States  paid  Great  Britain  $2,600,000  in  full  settlement 
of  the  claims.  The  other  charge  of  the  British  that  the  Americans 
dishonored  the  treaty  of  1783  by  refusing  to  remunerate  the  Loyalists 
for  their  losses,  the  Jay  treaty  passed  over  in  silence.  The  British  so  far 
met  the  American  demand  for  a  commercial  treaty  as  to  open  the  ports 
of  Great  Britain  to  American  vessels,  and  even  those  of  the  West  Indies 
to  American  vessels  of  a  certain  size.  This  last  concession  as  to  the 
West  Indies,  however,  was  coupled  with  the  condition  that  the  United 
States  must  on  her  part  agree  not  to  export  to  any  part  of  the  world 
molasses,  sugar,  coffee,  cocoa,  or  cotton,  which  so  angered  the  Senate 
of  the  United  States  that  in  ratifying  the  treaty  it  refused  to  accept 
the  West  Indian  concession  with  its  humiliating  proviso. 

Not  a  single  contested  principle  of  international  law  as  to  neutral 
trade  was  yielded  by  the  British  in  the  treaty,  not  even  the  right  of 
The  rights  of  impressment  of  seamen.  The  United  States  neutral 
neutrals  in  vessels  would,  therefore,  still  be  liable  to  capture  and  con 
fiscation  if  they  carried  to  France  the  alleged  contraband 
foodstuffs,  broke  through  a  paper  blockade,  carried  an  enemy's  goods, 
or  traded  in  the  French  West  Indies,  and  their  sailors  would  still  be 
liable  to  impressment.  There  was  some  compensation  to  the  Americans 
in  the  provision  of  the  treaty  for  the  appointment  of  a  commission  to 
determine  the  extent  of  any  unwarranted  losses  already  inflicted  on 
the  American  vessels  by  the  British.  The  commission  met  but  dis 
banded  without  being  able  to  come  to  an  agreement,  and  later  the 
British  by  treaty  awarded  the  Americans  $10,000,000  for  their  losses. 
Finally,  the  Jay  treaty  provided  for  the  appointment  of  a  commission  to 
settle  a  dispute  which  had  arisen  concerning  the  northeastern  boundary 
line  between  Canada  and  the  United  States,  the  question  being  which 
was  the  river  mentioned  as  the  St.  Croix  in  the  treaty  of  1783. 

Unacceptable  as  the  treaty  was  on  account  of  the  refusal  of  the 
British  to  give  up  their  practices  upon  the  sea,  it  averted  war  with 

Great    Britain.     This    seemed    to    Washington    and    the 
Reception  of  .  .   ,      ,  ,.     .  ,      , 

the  treaty  in     conservative  commercial  classes  a  distinct  triumph,  but 

^e  friends  °f  France  and  many  other  Americans  con 
sidered  the  treaty  a  disgrace.  Hamilton  was  stoned  for 
defending  the  agreement,  while  the  President  himself  was  abused  in 
language  which,  he  said,  "  could  scarcely  be  applied  to  a  Nero,  to  a 
notorious  defaulter,  or  even  to  a  common  pickpocket." 

The  Jay  treaty  became  known  in  France  late  in  the  year  1795. 


SUCCESS  OF  THE  NEW  CONSTITUTION  199 

That  their  old  ally  should  make  such  a  friendly  agreement  with  their 
enemy  seemed  to  the  French  unbelievable.     The  United    French 
States  minister  to  France,  James  Monroe,  sympathized    h«stility- 
with  the  French  position,  and  was  recalled  for  his  indiscreet  criticism 
of  his   own   government.     France   refused   to   receive   his   successor, 
Charles  Cotesworth  Pinckney,  and  promptly  ordered  new  captures  of 
American  merchantmen;  nor  did  the  French  resume  friendly  relations 
with  the  United  States  for  several  years. 

Two  other  important  treaties  were  arranged  by  Washington.     One 
with  Spain  recognized  at  last  the  old  claim  of  the  United  States,  based 
on  the  treaty  of  1783,  that  she  had  the  right  to  ship  prod-    TWO  other 
uce  down  the  Mississippi  and  out  from  the  Spanish  port    treaties- 
of  New  Orleans  without  the  payment  of  a  duty;   another,  with  the 
Barbary  States  of  the  northern  shores  of  Africa,  promised  to  these 
free-booters  of  the  Mediterranean  a  bribe  of  shiploads  of  presents 
in  return  for  security  from  capture  for   the  vessels  of  the  United 
States. 

These  trade  treaties  with  the  European  nations,  like  those  con 
cluded  in  the  previous  decade  with  France,  Holland,  Sweden,  and 

Prussia,  show  the  efforts  of  the  new  nation  to  reach  out  for    , 

»i.i-i  i  r    i  A  he  begin- 

world-wide  trade.     Another  phase  of  the  same  movement,    ning  of 


small  at  first  but  destined  to  grow,  was  the  bold  attempt 
of  the  merchantmen  of  the  United  States  to  open  an 
Asiatic  trade.  Before  the  Revolution  the  longest  voyages  of  these 
ships  had  taken  them  only  as  far  as  the  west  coast  of  Africa,  but 
immediately  after  the  treaty  of  peace  with  Great  Britain  merchants 
of  New  York  and  Philadelphia  fitted  out  the  Empress  of  China,  loaded 
her  with  ginseng  and  other  articles  of  commerce  attractive  to  the 
Chinese,  and  on  February  22,  1784,  started  her  on  the  long  voyage  to 
China  for  tea  and  other  Chinese  products.  She  arrived  in  Canton, 
China,  in  six  months,  after  a  journey  of  thirteen  thousand  seven 
hundred  miles.  The  next  year  she  returned,  and  the  following  year  a 
ship  from  Salem,  Massachusetts,  started  out  on  a  similar  voyage.  In 
1786  eight  vessels  sailed  for  the  Orient,  in  1789  fifteen. 

Four  years  after  the  Empress  of  China  rounded  the  Cape  of  Good 
Hope  into  the  Indian  Ocean,  the  Columbia,  Captain  John  Kendrick,  and 
the  Lady  Washington,  Captain  Robert  Gray,  rounded  Cape    Discovery  Of 
Horn  into  the  Pacific  with  cargoes  of  trinkets  which  they    the  Colum- 
exchanged  with  the  native  Indians  on  the  present  north-    ] 
western  coast  of  the  United  States  for  the  furs  of  the  sea  otter,  the 
seal,  and  other  fur-bearing  animals.     This  new  cargo  they  carried  to 
Canton,  China,  where  they  bartered  away  the  furs  to  the  Chinese  for 

14 


200 


ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES 


teas,  silks,  and  porcelains  for  the  Boston  market.     The  Columbia  re 
turned  home  by  way  of  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  and  thus  an  American 

vessel  sailing  under  the  American  flag  cir 
cumnavigated  the  globe  for  the  first  time. 
In  a  similar  voyage  in  1792  Captain  Gray 
in  the  Columbia  discovered  the  Columbia 
River  and  this  vessel  sailed  around  the 
globe  a  second  time. 

Most  of  the  chief  ports  of  the  New 
England  and  Middle  States  were  inter 
ested  in  the  new  trade  with  the  Orient, 
among  them  Boston,  Salem,  Newport, 
Nantucket,  New  Bedford,  and  New  Haven, 
and  many  a  fortune  was  derived  from  the 
"India  ships,"  as  those  engaged  in  the 
On  some  voyages  the  profits  reached  one 


MEDAL  STRUCK  FOR  THE  VOYAGE 
OF  THE  "COLUMBIA" 


Asiatic  trade  were  called, 
thousand  per  cent. 

WASHINGTON'S    FAREWELL   ADDRESS 

As  the  end  of  his  second  term  drew  near,  President  Washington 
desired  to  give  parting  words  of  counsel  to  his  fellow-countrymen,  and 
Washing-  so  mgnly  respected  was  he  that  this  step  seemed  most 
ton's  fare-  appropriate,  although  it  was  required  neither  by  the  Con 
stitution  nor  by  Congress.  No  other  President,  with  the 
exception  of  Andrew  Jackson,  has  presumed  to  follow  the  example. 
Washington  begged  the  people  to  cherish  the  Union  of  the  states, 
pointing  out  how  North,  South,  East,  and  West  were  mutually  helpful 
to  one  another;  he  sounded  a  warning  against  political  parties  which 
represented  mere  sections,  and  against  too  violent  partisanship  in 
national  parties;  and  he  advised  against  further  amendment  of  the 
Constitution.  Religion  and  morality,  as  " indispensable  supports" 
to  "political  prosperity,"  were  urged  upon  all.  He  exhorted  the 
country  to  "observe  good  faith  and  justice  with  all  nations,"  to  "cul 
tivate  peace  and  harmony  with  all."  "It  is  our  true  policy,"  he 
declared,  "to  steer  clear  of  permanent  alliances  with  any  portion  of  the 
foreign  world."  In  other  words,  he  would  have  the  nation  in  its  foreign 
relations  maintain  the  principles  of  his  own  proclamation  of  neutrality. 
In  the  midst  of  the  Civil  War,  sixty-five  years  later,  President  Abraham 
Lincoln  considered  these  words  of  the  first  President  so  wise  that  he  re 
quested  his  fellow-citizens  to  assemble  and  listen  to  the  reading  of  the 
entire  address,  and  in  almost  every  city,  village,  and  hamlet  in  the 
Northern  States  this  was  done  on  the  twenty-second  of  February,  1862. 


SUCCESS  OF  THE  NEW   CONSTITUTION  201 

In  1796  Vice  President  John  Adams  received  the  nomination  of  the 
Federalist  party  for  the  presidency  at  the  hands  of  the  congressional 
caucus  or  convention  of  the  members  of  that  party  in    john  ^dams 
Congress,  while  the  caucus  of  the  Democratic-Republi-    the  second 
cans  gave  a  similar  nomination  to  their  founder,  Thomas 
Jefferson.     The    congressional    caucus    method    of    nomination    was 
secret,  liable  to  intrigue,  and  undemocratic,  but  it  was  a  gathering 
of  party  leaders  that  was  easily  assembled  in  these  early  days  when 
poor  roads  and  bridges  rendered  national  gatherings  difficult.     Adams 
was  chosen  President  by  the  electors  with  a  vote  in  the  electoral  col 
leges  of  71,  against  68  for  Jefferson,  who  became  Vice  President.     In 
this  one  instance  the  system  of  election  brought  into  office  a  President 
and  a  Vice  President  of  different  parties. 

CONTINUED   TROUBLES   WITH   FRANCE 

President  Adams  took  up  with  energy  the  question  of  relations 
with  France,  bequeathed  to  him  as  an  unsettled  problem  from  the  pre 
vious  administration.  With  the  consent  of  the  Senate  The  "X.  Y. 
he  sent  three  special  commissioners  to  France  to  negotiate  z-  affair-" 
a  treaty  of  friendship,  just  as  Washington  had  sent  Jay  to  Great  Britain 
to  straighten  out  relations  with  that  country.  The  French  statesmen 
offered  open  insult  to  these  commissioners  by  demands  for  huge  bribes 
as  a  necessary  preliminary  to  negotiations.  One  of  the  commissioners, 
Charles  Cotesworth  Pinckney  of  South  Carolina,  spurned  the  proposal 
with  the  indignant  exclamation,  "No,  no,  no,  not  a  sixpence,"  which 
his  eulogists  have  expanded  into  "Millions  for  defense,  not  one  cent 
for  tribute,"  and  President  Adams  voiced  the  sentiment  of  the  country 
when  he  declared  in  a  message  to  Congress  that  he  would  not  send 
"another  minister  to  France  without  assurance  that  he  would  be 
received  as  the  representative  of  a  great,  free,  and  independent  nation." 
In  communicating  to  Congress  the  insulting  demands  of  the  French  the 
President  omitted  giving  the  real  names  of  the  French  agents  con 
cerned,  but  substituted  in  their  places  in  the  published  dispatches 
the  letters  X.  Y.  and  Z.,  and  the  episode  came  to  be  known  as  the  "X. 
Y.  Z.  affair." 

The  spirit  of  war  was  aroused  in  the  United  States.     By  enthusiastic 
votes  the  two  houses  of  Congress  provided  for  the  organization  of  a 
new  army  with  Washington  as  commander  and  for  a  large    Reprisal  on 
increase  in  the  navy.     A  few  successful  encounters  took    France- 
place  with  the  French  frigates  in  the  waters  of  the  French  West  Indies, 
but  war  was  not  formally  declared.     In  these  hostile  acts  toward 
France  the  United  States  was  simply  retaliating  for  that  country's 


202  ORGANIZATION   OF  THE  UNITED  STATES 

supposed  hostile  acts  toward  herself;  in  other  words,  the  so-called 
naval  war  with  France  of  1798  was  "a  prolonged  series  of  reprisals." 
Contrary  to  the  wishes  of  the  leading  members  of  his  party,  President 
Adams  resumed  friendly  relations  with  France,  when  Napoleon  Bona- 
Peace  with  parte,  who  had  risen  to  supreme  power  in  that  country, 
France.  made  peaceful  overtures.  A  treaty  between  the  two 

nations  followed  in  1800,  in  which  the  United  States,  in  return  for  the 
consent  of  France  to  the  abrogation  of  the  old  treaty  of  alliance  of  1778, 
definitely  renounced  its  claim  on  France  for  damages  to  American  ship 
ping  since  the  outbreak  of  the  British-French  war  in  1793.  France 
subscribed  to  the  principle  of  the  United  States  that  "free  ships  make 
free  goods,"  but  she  did  not  renounce  any  of  her  other  contentions 
concerning  the  rights  of  neutrals  on  the  sea  in  time  of  war. 

FEDERALIST  MISTAKES  IN  INTERNAL  ADMINISTRATION 

The  statesmanship  that  had  guided  the  Federalists  in  their  organiza 
tion  of  the  government  and  in  their  conduct  of  foreign  affairs  seemed 
to  desert  the  party  in  their  administration  of  internal 

Internal  ad-  .,,.    .  .        ,  . 

ministration,  affairs  under  Adams.  As  trie  excitement  against  France 
Three  un-  increased  from  month  to  month  in  1798  the  Democratic- 
Republican  party,  which  prided  itself  on  friendliness  with 
France,  was  completely  eclipsed  in  popular  esteem  by  the  Federalists, 
who,  as  the  party  in  power,  stood  for  war.  In  the  rising  war  spirit 
President  Adams  became  very  popular,  but  he  failed  to  make  a  wise 
use  of  his  power.  He  gave  his  assent  to  the  passage  of  three  unwise 
laws,  which  were  aimed  primarily  at  the  French  immigrants'  and  sym 
pathizers,  though  he  was  opposed  in  the  step  by  some  of  the  strongest 
men  of  the  party,  such  as  Alexander  Hamilton  and  John  Marshall. 
First,  the  Naturalization  Act,  which  raised  from  five  to  fourteen  years 
the  period  of  residence  required  of  foreigners  before  naturalization, 
reversing  the  traditional  policy  of  welcome  to  immigrants  which  had 
characterized  the  country  from  the  beginning.  Second,  the  Alien  Act, 
which  gave  to  the  President  the  power  to  send  out  of  the  country  "all 
such  aliens  as  he  shall  judge  dangerous  to  the  peace  and  safety  of  the 
United  States,"  another  thrust  at  immigrants.  Third,  the  Sedition 
Act,  which  made  it  a  crime  to  "  write,  print,  utter,  or  publish  scan 
dalous  and  malicious  writing"  against  the  President  or  Congress,  "with 
the  intent  to  defame"  them  or,  "to  bring  them  or  either  of  them,  into 
contempt  or  disrepute,"  a  blow  at  freedom  of  speech  and  of  the  press. 
Conservative  Europe,  backed  by  the  ideals  and  traditions  of  a 
civilization  centuries  old,  could  hardly  have  gone  farther  in  checking 
freedom.  An  unfriendly  attitude  toward  aliens  and  attacks  on  the 


SUCCESS  OF  THE  NEW  CONSTITUTION  203 

freedom  of  the  press  and  on  free  speech  might  have  been  expected 
in  long-established  monarchies;  indeed  at  this  very  time    significance 
such  laws  were  temporarily  on  the  statute  books  of  Great    of  the  laws* 
Britain.     That  such  laws  were  passed  as  the  acts  of  a  free  country  on 
the  liberty-loving  frontier  in  a  time  of  peace,  is  a  matter  of  wonder. 
Evidently  changes  had  been  going  on  in  the  United  States. 

Life  on  the  seaboard,  which  had  been  the  first  American  frontier, 
was  undergoing  a  change,  and  in  some  ways  it  already  more  resembled 

the  life  of  Europe  than  its  own  original  condition  in  the  wil-    . 

.    .  .  Explanation 

derness  or  the  life  on  the  frontier  west  of  the  Alleghames.  Of  the  con- 
There  was  a  marked  tendency  toward  conservatism, 
Manufacturing  still  lagged,  but  thanks  to  the  stimulus 
of  the  new  opportunities  opened  by  the  wars  in  Europe,  commerce  on 
the  sea  and  the  allied  interest  of  shipbuilding  were  larger  industries 
than  ever  before  and  were  laying  the  foundations  of  great  fortunes. 
New  companies  were  speculating  in  western  lands,  and  the  Bank  of 
the  United  States  and  smaller  private  banks  were  affording  increased 
banking  opportunities.  With  greater  wealth  came  the  conservatism 
which  usually  accompanies  commercial  prosperity. 

While  the  seaboard  was  tending  to  conservatism,  the  West,  progres 
sive,  restless,  independent,  maintained  the  characteristics  of  frontier  life. 
As  the  frontier  has  gradually  marched  from  year  to  year          . 
across   the  continent    to   the  Pacific,   conservatism  has    action  of  the 
slowly  followed,  and  the  interaction  of  the  ideas  of  the 
East  and  of  the  West  has  played  a  large  part  in  shaping 
the  national  destiny. 

The  Democratic-Republican  protest  against  the  Federalist  laws 
found  expression  in  Virginia  and  Kentucky  in  resolutions  passed  by 
their  legislatures  in  1798,  known  as  the  Virginia  and  the  The  Virginia 

Kentucky   Resolutions,    which    embodied    principles    of    and  Ken~ 
.  ,  .          .  ^,  T      •     '        f  -i        tucky  Reso- 

far-reachmg    importance.     These    resolutions,    from    the    lutions  of 

pens  of  Madison  and  Jefferson  respectively,  declared  the  1798- 
Alien  and  the  Sedition  Acts  unconstitutional.  They  set  forth  the  doc 
trine  of  states'  rights  according  to  which  it  was  claimed,  first,  that 
when  the  Constitution  was  formed,  the  states  by  a  common  agreement 
united  to 'create  the  national  government  and  intrusted  to  it  certain 
powers;  second,  that  the  national  government  so  created  was  authorized 
to  act  simply  as  the  agent  of  the  states,  which  were  the  real  sovereigns, 
and  to  do  only  those  things  which  were  specifically  granted  to  it  in 
the  compact  or  Constitution;  and  third,  that  the  right  to  decide  whether 
the  national  government  did  or  did  not  act  according  to  the  terms  of 
the  compact,  belonged  to  the  states  alone,  the  creators  of  the  national 


204  ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  UNITED   STATES 

government.  The  legislature  of  Kentucky  went  a  step  farther  the 
following  year,  and  added  to  these  premises  the  logical  conclusion  that 
if  a  state  should  decide  that  the  national  government  had  acted  con 
trary  to  the  agreement,  for  example  by  passing  unconstitutional  laws 
in  Congress,  the  states  could  declare  those  laws  null  and  void.  No 
other  states  indorsed  the  stand  of  Virginia  and  Kentucky,  though 
copies  of  the  resolutions  were  sent  to  all  the  legislatures. 

The  theory  of  government  embodied  in  these  resolutions  is  some 
times  called  the  compact  theory  of  the  Constitution.  How  it  would 
Federalist  work  out  in  actual  practice  was  not  at  the  time  made 
criticism.  cjean  jts  enemies  declared  that  it  would  not  work  at 
all.  They  pointed  out  how  it  might  easily  happen  that  some  states 
would  choose  to  nullify  one  law,  other  states  another  law,  and  so  on, 
until  the  national  government  would  become  an  object  of  ridicule  and 
its  laws  be  reduced  to  confusion.  These  were  the  arguments  of  Wash 
ington,  Adams,  and  the  Federalists,  who  favored  accepting  the  Supreme 
Court  as  the  final  judge  for  all  the  states  in  matters  concerning  the 
interpretation  of  the  Constitution,  on  the  ground  that  in  this  way 
only  could  the  dignity  of  the  national  government  be  safeguarded  and 
the  uniformity  of  the  national  laws  throughout  the  Union  be  secured. 

The  principles  of  the  Virginia  and  Kentucky  Resolutions  led  to 
many  conflicts  between  the  states  and  the  national  government, 
Later  im-  particularly  in  New  England  before  and  during  the  war 
portance  of  of  1812,  when  that  section  was  opposed  to  the  policy  of 
cipieToYthe  the  national  government,  and  in  South  Carolina  in  1832, 
Resolutions.  wnen  that  state  actually  nullified  a  law  of  the  United 
States.  The  influence  of  the  theory  reached  its  height  when  it  played 
an  important  part  in  bringing  on  the  Civil  War  between  the  Northern 
and  Southern  States  in  1861. 

In  the  last  weeks  of  the  administration  of  President  Adams,  when 
the  Federalists  knew  that  they  must  soon  give  up  their  control  of  the 
The  Feder-  executive  and  legislative  branches  of  the  government, 
alists  and  they  passed  a  law  creating  sixteen  new  United  States 
the  courts.  judgeships,  a  number  far  beyond  the  needs  of  the  time, 
and  the  President  filled  the  places  with  the  members  of  his  own 
party.  These  were  the  " midnight  judges,"  so  named  because  Adams 
was  said  to  have  been  occupied  far  into  the  night  of  his  last  day  in 
office  signing  their  commissions.  Six  weeks  before  the  end  of  his  ad 
ministration  Adams  appointed  as  Chief  Justice  of  the  Supreme  Court 
of  the  United  States  John  Marshall  of  Virginia,  who  is  generally 
recognized  as  the  greatest  judge  who  ever  sat  upon  the  Supreme 
Bench. 


SUCCESS  OF  THE  NEW  CONSTITUTION  205 

A  bitter  dispute  arose  over  the  presidential  election  of  1800.     The 
Constitution  directed  the  presidential  electors,  when  they  came  together 

in  their  respective  states,  to  vote  by  ballot  for  two  persons.    . 

f  ,f          Dispute  over 

the   one  receiving   the  greatest  number  of  votes,   if  a    the  presiden- 

majority,  to  become  President,  and  the  one  receiving  the  Jj^iJjjJf*1011 
next  highest  number  of  votes,  if  a  majority,  to  become 
Vice  President.  This  provision  was  made  in  the  expectation  that 
each  elector  would  exercise  his  own  independent  judgment  in  casting 
his  ballot,  but  that  a  sufficient  number  would  usually  agree  to  give  a 
majority  of  votes  to  one  candidate.  In  case  the  colleges  failed  to 
elect,  the  choice  of  the  President  was  to  devolve  upon  the  House  of 
Representatives  and  that  of  the  Vice  President  upon  the  Senate.  For 
some  strange  reason  it  was  not  foreseen  by  the  makers  of  the  Con 
stitution,  or  if  foreseen  no  provision  was  made  for  the  contingency, 
that  political  parties  would  arise  among  the  voters,  which  would 
deprive  the  electors  of  their  freedom  of  choice.  In  1800  party 
loyalty  brought  it  about  that  the  Democratic-Republican  electors 
cast  their  ballots  in  the  electoral  colleges  for  the  candidates  selected 
for  them  by  their  party.  Every  Democratic-Republican  elector 
voted  for  Thomas  Jefferson  and  Aaron  Burr,  who  thus  were  tied 
for  the  first  place  with  73  votes  each,  while  President  Adams  and 
Charles  Cotesworth  Pinckney  received  the  Federalist  vote  of  65  and  64 
respectively.  The  House  of  Representatives  voted  off  the  tie  in  favor 
of  Jefferson,  who  became  President,  while  the  Vice  Presidency  fell  to 
Burr.  To  avoid  a  tie  vote  in  the  future  the  twelfth  amendment  of  the 
Constitution  was  adopted  in  1804,  directing  the  electors  to  ballot  for 
President  and  Vice  President  separately. 

THE   SERVICES   OF  THE   FEDERALISTS 

With  the  close  of  the  administration  of  Adams  the  regime  of  the 
Federalists  ended,  and  a  long  period  of  Democratic-Republican  rule 
in  national  affairs  was  begun.  The  Federalists  had  The  services 
placed  the  government  on  a  firm  footing  and  established  of  the  Feder- 
valuable  precedents.  They  had  given  the  nation  its  first  * 
tariff,  and  had  satisfied  the  foreign  and  domestic  creditors  of  the 
country  as  to  the  good  faith  of  the  government;  they  had  created 
the  national  capital  at  Washington,  set  up  the  national  bank,  passed 
the  Judiciary  Act,  and  used  the  national  military  power  with  energy 
against  an  incipient  insurrection  and  against  the  Indians;  they  had 
shown  a  firm  hand  amidst  difficulties  in  dealing  with  Great  Britain, 
France,  and  Spain,  and  on  the  whole  had  been  successful  in  the  con 
duct  of  foreign  affairs;  and  they  had  encouraged  a  capitalist  class  and 


206  ORGANIZATION  OF  THE   UNITED   STATES 

fostered  business.  In  all  these  matters  they  had  acted  on  the  theory 
of  loose  construction  of  the  Constitution,  and  had  insisted  on  exercising 
the  national  powers  to  the  full,  with  the  welfare  of  the  nation  as  a 
whole  in  view  rather  than  that  of  the  separate  states.  However,  with 
their  leanings  toward  aristocracy,  they  wandered  too  far  from  the 
democratic  spirit  of  the  country,  and  for  this  they  were  thrust  from 
power. 

GENERAL  REFERENCES 

MCMASTER,  United  States,  I;  BASSETT,  Federalist  System;  J.  P.  GORDY,  Political 
Parties  in  the  United  States;  LODGE,  George  Washington;  N.  HAPGOOD,  George  Wash 
ington;  P.  L.  FORD,  George  Washington;  H.  B.  LEARNED,  The  President's  Cabinet. 

SPECIAL  TOPICS 

1.  THE  WHISKY  REBELLION.  '  Epochs,  IV,  90-107;  BASSETT,  Federalist  System, 
101-116;  AVERY,  United  States,  VII,  141-155. 

2.  PRESIDENT  WASHINGTON'S  SOCIAL  CUSTOMS.    Epochs,   IV,    62-64;   BASSETT, 
Federalist  System,  150-162;  Source  Book,  181-183;  Journal  of  William  Maclay. 

3.  THE  MISSION  or  GENET.     BASSETT,  Federalist  System,  84-100;  AVERY,  United 
States,  VII,  78-91;  Contemporaries,  III,  307-311. 

4.  THE  FRENCH  DECLARATION  OF  THE  RIGHTS  OP  MAN.    Old  South  Leaflets,  VII,  8. 

ILLUSTRATIVE  MATERIAL  ' 

G.  ATHERTON,  Conqueror;  COOPER,  Afloat  and  Ashore,  Miles  Walling  ford,  and 
Pioneers;  S.  W.  MITCHELL,  Red  City;  KIPLING,  Brother  Square  Toes,  in  Rewards  and 
Fairies. 

SUGGESTIVE   QUESTIONS 

What  were  the  chief  problems  of  the  national  government  under  the  Federalist 
regime?  What  were  the  chief  triumphs  of  the  Federalists?  What  were  the  leading 
features  of  Hamilton's  financial  policy?  Describe  the  work  of  the  first  Congress. 
What  were  the  leading  mistakes  of  President  Washington?  How  do  you  account  for 
the  rise  of  political  parties  under  Washington?  Why  are  political  parties  necessary? 
Mention  at  least  three  instances  of  alleged  ingratitude  to  France  on  the  part  of  the 
United  States  from  1776  to  1801.  Was  each  justifiable?  Was  it  a  mistake  for 
Adams  to  continue  the  cabinet  of  Washington?  Why?  What  were  some  of  the  accusa 
tions  against  Washington?  \Vhat  is  nullification?  Were  there  any  instances  of  nulli 
fication  up  to  1801?  What  good  purpose  was  served  by  the  Whisky  Rebellion?  What 
is  a  treaty?  How  does  a  treaty  differ  from  arbitration?  Define  "constitutional"  and 
"unconstitutional."  What  was  the  importance  of  the  Jay  treaty?  From  what  sec 
tions  of  the  country  in  general  and  from  what  classes  of  society  was  the  Federalist 
party  recruited?  What  is  sectionalism  in  American  politics?  Do  you  think  Hamilton's 
financial  measures  would  have  succeeded  if  the  country  had  experienced  poor  crops 
or  a  financial  panic  at  that  time?  What  does  the  Genet  episode  prove  ought  to  be 
the  conduct  of  diplomatic  representatives  in  a  foreign  country?  What  probably 
suggested  to  President  Washington  advising  his  fellow-citizens  to  avoid  alliances 
with  European  nations? 


PART  V 
NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT,    1801-1841 

.  CHAPTER  XVI 
JEFFERSONIAN   DEMOCRACY 

NEW  PRINCIPLES   IN  INTERNAL  ADMINISTRATION 

JEFFERSON  came  to  the  presidential  chair  as  the  champion  of  democ 
racy,  in  opposition  to  aristocracy  and  to  conservatism.  In  a  notable 
book  on  "Democracy  and  Liberty,"  an  unfriendly  critic,  The  new 
Lecky,  from  whose  " American  Revolution"  we  have  era> 
already  quoted,  has  sneered  at  democracy  as  government  by  the 
"poorest,  the  most  ignorant,  the  most  incapable,  who  are  necessarily 
the  most  numerous."  Yet  the  formulation  of  the  democratic  idea 
of  popular  participation  in  government  may  fairly  be  looked  upon  as 
Jefferson's  greatest  achievement  and  one  of  the  greatest  achievements 
in  the  whole  history  of  national  politics.  It  was  of  distinctly  more 
value  than  either  the  theory  of  strict  construction  of  the  Constitution 
or  that  of  states'  rights,  the  other  leading  contentions  of  the  Jeffersonian 
party.  Jefferson's  ideals  of  democracy,  though  as  old  as  the  colonies 
themselves,  were  not  thoroughly  worked  into  the  fabric  of  national 
life  at  once  but  are  still  in  process  of  progressive  application. 

The  foremost  leader  of  the  Democratic-Republicans  was  Jefferson 
himself.     The  Secretary  of  State,  James  Madison,  who  since   1789 
had  performed  useful  services  in  the  House  of  Represen-    Democratic_ 
tatives  as  a  member  from  Virginia,  and  Albert  Gallatin,    Republican 
a  young  Swiss  immigrant,  who  as  Secretary  of  the  Treas 
ury  made  a  record  second  only  to  that  of  Hamilton,  were  among  the 
strong  men  of  the  party. 

At  his  inauguration  Jefferson  disregarded  the  precedents  of  the  two 
Federalist  Presidents,  who  at  their  inauguration  had  been  accom 
panied  to  the  capitol  in  state,  and  walked  with  a  few  friends    Jefferson's 
to  the  simple  ceremony.     His  inaugural  address  was  a    inauguration, 
striking  document.     He  pleaded  for  "a  wise  and  frugal  government, 

207 


208  NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 

which  shall  restrain  men  from  injuring  one  another,  shall  leave  them 
otherwise  free  to  regulate  their  own  pursuits  of  industry  and  improve 
ment,  and  shall  not  take  from  the  mouth  of  labor  the  bread  it  has 
earned."  The  essential  principles  of  good  government  he  summed  up 
as  follows:  " Equal  and  exact  justice  to  all  men,  of  whatever  state  or 
persuasion,  religious  or  political:  —  peace,  commerce,  and  honest  friend 
ship  with  all  nations,  entangling  alliances  with  none:  —  the  support  of 
the  state  governments  in  all  their  rights,  as  the  most  competent  ad 
ministrations  for  our  domestic  concerns  and  the  surest  bulwarks 
against  anti-republican  tendencies  —  the  preservation  of  the  general 
government  in  its  constitutional  vigor,  as  the  sheet  anchor  of  our  peace 
at  home,  and  safety  abroad." 

As  a  further  break  with  Federalist  precedent,  Jefferson  sent  written 

Written  messages   to    Congress   instead  of   appearing  before  the 

presidential       assembled  legislators  in  person,  and  his  example  in  this 

respect   was    followed   till    the   presidency  of    Woodrow 

Wilson. 

The  Democratic-Republicans  passed  few  important  laws  in  Con 
gress.  The  Alien  and  Sedition  Laws,  which  by  their  own  provisions 

expired  a  few  years  after  their  enactment,  were  not  re- 
Democratic-  ,  ,  «T  T  •  Ill 

Republican  newed;  the  Naturalization  Act  was  amended  by  the 
theory  and  reduction  of  the  term  of  residence  in  the  country  required 

of  a  foreigner  before  naturalization,  from  fourteen  back 
to  the  original  term  of  five  years,  where  it  still  remains;  taxes  were 
lowered  and  the  size  of  the  navy  reduced.  The  national  military 
academy  at  West  Point  on  the  Hudson  was  established  in  1802.  The 
truth  is,  that  when  charged  with  the  responsibility  of  administering 
national  affairs,  the  followers  of  Jefferson  found  that  their  ideal  of  a 
central  government  with  restricted  powers  was  not  practical;  and  their 
most  important  measures,  such  as  the  purchase  of  Louisiana  and  the 
retaliatory  acts  against  Great  Britain  and  France  for  their  insulting 
practices  on  the  sea,  were  based  on  a  loose  construction  of  the  Con 
stitution  and  presupposed  a  strong  central  government. 

One  of  the  first  measures  of  the  new  administration  was  to  legislate 
the  "midnight  judges"  out  of  office  by  the  repeal  of  the  law  creating 

the  offices  to  which  they  had  been  appointed.  The 
on  the  courts  Supreme  Court  could  not  be  so  easily  managed.  It  was 
failure8  ^a^mg  to  tne  victorious  party  that  the  national  tribunal 

was  in  the  hands  of  Federalist  judges,  with  John  Marshall 
as  Chief  Justice,  in  a  position  to  wield  the  power  of  the  court  in  favor 
of  loose  construction  and  a  strong  central  government  against  their 
own  professions  of  strict  construction  and  states'  rights.  Early  in 


JEFFERSONIAN  DEMOCRACY 


209 


1803  came  the  decision  in  the  case  of  Marbury  z>.  Madison,  in  which 
the  court  held  that  it  had  the  power  to  declare  a  law  null  and  void,  ii 
this  law  was  contrary  to  the  Constitution,  and  that  the  court  must 

necessarily  have  this  power  if  it  was 
to  exercise  its  function  of  guarding 
the  Constitution  as  "the  supreme 
law  of  the  land." 

The  courts  of  the  separate 
states  had  already  exercised  the 
power  to  set  aside  the  The  power 
laws  of  their  own  leg-  of  the  courts- 
islatures,  but  the  assertion  by  the 
Supreme  Court  of  the  same  right 
over  the  laws  of  the  Congress  was 
altogether  unprecedented.  The 
decision  in  Marbury  v.  Madison 
was  the  Supreme  Court's  first  great 
decision  bearing  on  the  powers  of 
the  various  branches  of  the  central 
government,  and  it  gave  to  the 
court  an  importance  in  the  govern 
ment  of  which  the  framers  of  the 
JOHN  MARSHALL  Constitution  probably  never 

dreamed.     The  authority  once 

assumed  the  tribunal  has  successfully  maintained  against  the  occa 
sional  opposition  both  of  Congress  and  of  the  Executive.  Down  to 
the  present  day  the  national  court  has  declared  null  and  void  at 
least  twenty-one  acts  of  Congress  and  two  hundred  state  laws,  while 
the  state  courts  are  now  setting  aside  as  unconstitutional  the  acts 
of  the  state  legislatures  at  the  rate  of  from  fifty  to  seventy-five 
annually. 

President  Jefferson  was  incensed  at  the  stand  of  the  court.  If  the 
doctrine  of  Marbury  v.  Madison  held,  said  he,  the  Constitution  "is  a 
mere  thing  of  wax  in  the  hands  of  the  judiciary,  which  unsuccessful 
they  can  twist  and  shape  into  any  form  they  please."  He  impeachment 
believed  that  Congress  and  the  President  had  as  much  of  the  Judses- 
right  as  the  court  to  decide  on  the  constitutionality  of  laws,  and  that 
the  court  had  no  right  to  force  its  ideas  on  either.  The  House  of 
Representatives  proceeded  to  impeach  Judge  Chase  of  the  Supreme 
Bench  before  the  Senate  of  the  United  States,  in  the  hope  that  by  this 
method  they  might  rid  themselves  of  the  Federalist  judges  one  by  one 
and  appoint  Democratic-Republicans  in  their  places.  The  Senate  sat 


210  NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 

as  a  court  to  hear  the  evidence  but  voted  against  removal,  and  the 
Federalist  judges  were  safe. 

The  Democratic-Republican  distrust  of  the  courts  was  reflected 
in  several  states,  which  changed  the  tenure  of  the  judges  of  the  state 
Changes  in  courts  from  a  continuous  term  " during  good  behavior" 
the  judiciary  to  a  term  limited  in  duration  to  a  prescribed  number  of 
tes'  years,  and  changed  the  method  of  their  selection  from 
appointment  by  the  legislature  to  election  by  the  people. 

THE  PURCHASE  OF  LOUISIANA 

By  far  the  most  important  event   in  the  first  administration  of 
Jefferson  was   the  purchase  for  $15,000,000  of  the  French  territory 

covering  the  entire  Mississippi  Valley  in  the  interior  of  the 
The  extent  .  P  i        •»*•••••    V»«  i        -r»      i 

of  the  continent,    from    the    Mississippi    River   to    the    Rocky 

Louisiana  Mountains  and  from  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  to  Canada.  The 
Purchase. 

new  area  of  875,000  square  miles  was  somewhat  larger 

than  the  original  area  of  830,000  square  miles,  with  which  the  coun 
try  started  on  its  independent  career  in  1783,  and  included  the 
present  states  of  Arkansas,  Missouri,  Iowa,  Oklahoma,  Kansas,  and 
Nebraska,  and  parts  of  Louisiana,  Minnesota,  Texas,  North  and  South 
Dakota,  New  Mexico,  Colorado,  Wyoming,  and  Montana. 

Rumors  had  come  from  Europe  that  France,  under  the  rule  of 
Napoleon,  had  embarked  on  the  policy  of  restoring  the  colonial  empire 

of  the  French  in  the  interior  of  North  America,  which  she 
Importance  .  i     i         n      • 

ofthepos-        had  given  up  to  the  Spaniards  in  1763,  and  that  Spain 

tShfmouth  had  alreadY  ceded  back  to  France  this  vast  tract.  The 
of  the  vision  of  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi  in  the  hands  of  the 

ssippi.  strong  power  of  France  stirred  President  Jefferson  to 
action.  It  was  down  the  Mississippi  and  past  the  port  of  New  Orleans 
that  the  settlers  of  Tennessee,  Kentucky,  and  Ohio  found  the  most 
convenient  outlet  to  a  market  for  their  products,  as  we  have  already 
seen.  To  ship  these  over  the  mountains  to  the  seaboard  was  well-nigh 
impossible,  so  that  the  right  to  the  free  navigation  of  the  Mississippi 
was  indispensable  to  the  Westerners.  In  their  interests  President  Wash 
ington  had  made  the  treaty  with  Spain  in  1795,  securing  to  the  Ameri 
cans  of  the  interior  the  right  to  ship  their  goods  past  New  Orleans  to 
the  ocean  free  of  duty.  Not  till  they  had  gained  this  concession  were 
the  Westerners  entirely  loyal  to  the  Union;  but  now,  with  a  change  of 
masters  at  New  Orleans  pending,  that  free  outlet  to  the  sea  might  be 
taken  away.  The  prosperity  of  the  whole  Mississippi  Valley  was 
jeopardized. 

When  it  was  definitely  learned  that  France  had  acquired  Louisiana, 


JEFFERSONIAN  DEMOCRACY  211 

Jefferson  sent  commissioners  to  Paris  to  negotiate  for  the  purchase  of 
so  much  of  the  territory  as  lay  east  of  the  mouth  of  the    Negotiation 
Mississippi,   including  New  Orleans.     To   their  surprise    of  the 
Napoleon   offered   to   the   commissioners   to   sell   to   the    ] 
United  States  the  whole  of  the  vast  tract  in  the  interior,  and  the 
commissioners,  the  President,  and  the  Senate  accepted  the  offer.    Napo 
leon's  willingness  to  part  with  Louisiana  is  to  be  explained  on  two 
grounds,  first  his  desire  to  prevent  its  falling  into  the  hands  of  the 
British,  who  were  stronger  on  the  sea  than  the  French,  and  second,  his 
eagerness  to  add  the  purchase  money  to  his  national  treasury  for  the 
prosecution  of  his  European  wars. 

Jefferson  acted  on  the  conviction  that  the  mouth  of  a  great  river 
should  be  in  the  hands  of  the  same  nation  which  controlled  its  upper 
waters,   and   that   the  interior  of   the   continent  should    Arguments 
belong  to  the  power  which  controlled  the  coast.     Looking    fof  and 
to  the  future,  he   believed  in  giving  to   the  people  the    Sitorial 
opportunity  to  expand  westward.     The  political  opposi-    annexation, 
tion  to  the  purchase  was  confined  mainly  to  the  people  on  the  seaboard, 
where  there  was  jealous  fear  that  the  West  would  assume  too  great 
importance  with  this  vast  addition  of  territory.     They  put  forth  the 
argument,  first,  that  the  United  States  had  no  express  right  by  the 
Constitution  to  annex  new  territory,   an  argument  based  on  strict 
construction  turned  against  the  Democratic-Republicans  themselves; 
second,  that  the  coast  regions  could  ill  afford  to  lose  those  of  their 
fellow-citizens  who  might  migrate  to  the  new  country;  and  third,  that 
the  addition  of  the  new  territory  would  make  the  United  States  too 
large  to  govern.     This  was  before  the  days  of  the  telegraph  and  the 
railroad,  so  that  this  last  objection  had  more  weight  than  might  seem 
at  the  present  time. 

The  constitutional  argument  of  strict  construction  was  met  by  the 
loose  construction  argument   that  under   the  general   right   to   make 
treaties  there  was  certainly  included  the  right  to  make  this    The  Demo- 
particular  treaty,  for  annexation  of  terriory  was  one  of    cratic-Repub- 
,!  .  i       T      i,       •  i     •  •       i  lican  accept- 

the  topics  most  commonly  dealt  with  in  treaties  between    ance  of  loose 

sovereign   nations.     Jefferson   himself   at   first   felt   that    construction, 
he  was  not  authorized  by  the  Constitution  to  make  the  purchase  and 
he  wished  a  constitutional  amendment  authorizing  it,  but  he  finally 
set  his  scruples  aside  on  the  ground  that  the  acquisition  represented 
the  will  of  the  people,  and  posterity  has  approved  the  step. 

In  1805  Congress  divided  the  French  purchase  into  two  territories, 
Orleans  in  the  south  and  Louisiana  in  the  north.  In  1810  the  Supreme 
Court  confirmed  the  right  of  Congress  to  govern  the  annexed  terri- 


212  NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 

tories,  declaring  that  "the  power  of  governing  and  of  legislating  for  a 
Organization  territory  is  the  inevitable  consequence  of  the  right  to  ac- 
of  the  new  quire  and  hold  territory.  Could  this  position  be  con 
tested,  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  declares 
'  Congress  shall  have  power  to  dispose  of  and  make  all  needful  rules 
and  regulations  respecting  the  territory  and  other  property  belonging 
to  the  United  States.' "  Orleans  was  admitted  into  the  Union  as  the 
state  of  Louisiana  in  1812,  against  the  bitter  opposition  of  New  Eng 
land;  but  the  name  of  Louisiana  Territory  continued  to  be  applied  to 
the  northern  part  of  the  purchase. 

From  the  old  French  town  of  St.  Louis  on  the  Mississippi,  in  May, 
1804,  two  army  captains,  Meri wether  Lewis,  President  Jefferson's 
The  expedi-  private  secretary,  and  William  Clark,  a  brother  of  George 
tion  of  Lewis  Rogers  Clark,  set  out  under  the  auspices  of  the  national 
government  on  a  scientific  expedition  to  explore  the  new 
lands.  Forty-five  members  were  included  in  the  party.  A  journey  of 
six  months  took  them  two  thousand  miles  up  the  Missouri  to  a  point 
still  within  the  Louisiana  territory,  where  they  pitched  their  winter 
camp.  The  next  spring  brought  them  to  the  sources  of  the  Missouri, 
formed  by  the  junction  of  three  small  streams,  which  they  promptly 
named  Jefferson,  Madison,  and  Gallatin;  and  thence,  under  the  guid 
ance  of  an  Indian  girl,  they  came  over  the  crest  of  the  Rocky  Moun 
tains  into  a  new  country,  not  contained  in  the  purchase  from  France, 
where  the  rivers  flowed  to  the  west.  Following  down  one  of  these,  the 
Columbia,  they  reached  the  Pacific  in  November,  1805,  and  returned 
to  St.  Louis  the  following  year. 

The  expedition  enriched  science  by  the  discovery  of  new  trees,  flow 
ers,  and  plants,  by  the  mapping  of  the  courses  of  unknown  rivers,  and 
Results  of  the  by  the  observation  and  description  of  the  manners,  cus- 
expedition.  toms,  language,  and  religion  of  new  Indian  tribes.  As 
a  commentary  on  the  white  man's  treatment  of  the  natives,  it  was  noted 
that  the  farther  from  civilization  the  expedition  proceeded,  the  more 
friendly  were  the  Indians  found  to  be,  while  the  tribes  living  near  the 
white  settlements  were  almost  uniformly  hostile.  The  expedition  forged 
another  link  in  the  chain,  which  was  later  to  give  to  the  United  States 
its  hold  on  the  Columbia  River  country  of  Oregon,  already  visited  by 
Captain  Gray  in  the  Columbia  in  1792. 

In  1805-1806,  while  Lewis  and  Clark  were  absent  in  the  Northwest, 

The  explora-     Lieutenant  Zebulon  M.  Pike  of   the  army  explored  the 

tions  of  headwaters  of  the  Mississippi  and  then  turning  southward 

reached  the  Rocky  Mountains  near  the  present  site  of 

Denver  and  the  peak  which  bears  his  name.     He  was  captured  by 


JEFFERSONIAN  DEMOCRACY  213 

Spanish  soldiers,  conducted  through  Spanish  Texas,  and  finally  released 
in  Louisiana. 

The  presidential    campaign   of    1804    came    on    while    President 
Jefferson  was  at  the  flood  tide  of   personal  popularity,  and  he  was 
re-elected  over  the  Federalist  candidate,  Charles  Cotes-    The  presi_ 
worth  Pinckney  of  South  Carolina.     The  vote  of  162  to    dential  cam- 
14  in  the  electoral  colleges  showed  how  thoroughly  the    paign  c 
nation  indorsed  the  principles  of  the  Democratic-Republicans  and 
the  policy  of  territorial  expansion. 

Early  in  Jefferson's  second  term  the  West  again  came  into  promi 
nence  in  connection  with  the  schemes  of  Aaron  Burr.  The  political 
career  of  Burr  was  one  of  the  most  unlucky  in  the  history  The  conspir_ 
of  American  politics.  Although  a  lawyer  of  national  acy  of  Aaron 
reputation,  he  twice  failed  to  reach  the  goal  of  his  ambi 
tion,  the  presidency  of  the  United  States  in  the  one  instance  and  in  the 
other  the  governorship  of  the  state  of  New  York.  In  each  case  he  at 
tributed  his  failure  to  the  opposition  of  Alexander  Hamilton.  Duelling 
was  then  a  common  practice,  and  although  Burr  was  Vice  President  of 
the  United  States  he  sent  a  challenge  to  his  rival  and  in  the  encounter 
shot  him  dead.  The  office  of  the  vice  presidency  was  sadly  dis 
honored.  With  his  ambition  fired  perhaps  by  Jefferson's  success  in 
annexing  Louisiana,  at  the  close  of  his  vice  presidency  Burr  plunged 
into  a  scheme  that  discredited  him  still  more.  He  secretly  embarked 
on  a  quasi-military  expedition  down  the  Ohio  and  the  Mississippi 
to  the  southwest,  with  no  one  knows  what  plans;  probably  he  himself 
did  not  know  definitely.  He  may  have  hoped  to  make  himself  ruler  of 
a  new  state  in  the  Valley  of  the  Mississippi,  or  to  deprive  Spain  of  the 
northern  province  of  Texas  and  to  set  himself  up  as  King  or  Emperor 
of  a  new  nation.  Whatever  the  aim,  the  undertaking  came  to  an  in 
glorious  end.  Burr  was  arrested  and  tried  for  treason,  but  nothing 
was  proved  against  him  and  he  was  released;  his  political  career  was 
ruined,  and  he  passed  the  remainder  of  his  ill-starred  life  in  disgrace. 

FOREIGN  AFFAIRS 

There  were  serious  foreign  complications  in  Jefferson's  administra 
tion  under  two  different  sets  of  circumstances.  President  Washing 
ton's  tribute  to  the  pirates  of  the  Mediterranean  did  not 


prove  effective  in  saving  the  ships  of  the  United  States    the  pirates 

,    A  ,     .  ,.  of  the  Medi- 

from  capture  and  tneir  crews  and  passengers  from  im-    terranean 

prisonment.     The  government  and  sometimes  individuals    Sea- 

were  called  upon  to  pay  additional  ransoms  of  thousands  of  dollars. 

It  was  a  not  uncommon  occurrence  in  the  churches  of  the  seaboard 


214  NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 

for  the  minister  to  read  a  notice  of  the  capture  by  the  pirates  of  some 
member  of  the  congregation  and  to  call  for  contributions  for  his  ran 
som.  Even  the  peaceful  Jefferson  wearied  at  last  of  submission  and 
sent  three  different  squadrons  to  stop  the  payments  once  for  all.  The 
last  of  these,  under  Commodore  Preble,  worsted  the  Pasha  of  Tripoli 
and  his  pirates  so  thoroughly  that  they  agreed  in  1805  to  allow  vessels 
flying  the  flag  of  the  United  States  to  sail  unmolested.  Promises 
extracted  by  force  proved  more  effective  than  those  induced  by  bribes, 
and  with  the  exception  of  a  slight  repetition  of  this  show  of  force  to  the 
Dey  of  Algiers  a  few  years  later,  there  was  no  further  need  of  impressing 
on  the  Barbary  States  the  lesson  that  they  must  not  molest  American 
citizens.  In  addition  to  the  benefits  accruing  to  commerce,  was  the 
training  which  the  miniature  war  afforded  to  the  navy  of  the  United 
States. 

The  old  troubles  with  the  two  warring  powers  of  Great  Britain  and 
France  concerning  the  rights  of  neutrals  on  the  sea  in  time  of  war 
More  still  continued,  for  the  former,  in  spite  of  the  professions  of 

trouble  over  friendship  in  the  Jay  treaty,  and  the  latter,  in  spite  of  the 
neutrals!8  °f  treaty  of  1800,  persisted  in  their  attacks  on  the  neutral 
The  rule  of  merchantmen  of  the  United  States.  The  Americans  by 
this  time  were  employing  a  shrewd  device  to  elude  the 
Rule  of  1756,  which  rule  the  British  invoked  to  prevent  the  ships  of 
the  United  States  from  taking  part  in  the  commerce  of  the  French  West 
Indies.  Goods  were  brought  from  the  French  Islands  to  the  ports  of 
the  United  States,  unloaded,  and  the  regular  tariff  duties  paid  on  them 
at  the  customhouses;  then  the  cargoes  were  reloaded  and  shipped  to 
France  as  American  goods.  Technically  the  Rule  of  1756  had  not  been 
violated;  practically  all  knew  that  it  had  been  violated.  The  British 
side  in  the  resulting  dispute  was  expressed  in  the  doctrine  of  the  "  con 
tinuous  voyage,"  by  which  it  was  held  that  the  American  merchantmen 
sailing  for  France  from  the  West  Indies  by  way  of  the  United  States, 
did  not  accomplish  two  distinct  voyages,  but  one  continuous  voyage. 
The  British  pointed  out  that  at  the  reloading  in  the  ports  of  the  United 
States  the  vessels  in  question  were  accustomed  to  receive  back  again 
most  of  the  tariff  duty  which  they  had  already  paid  at  the  custom 
house.  The  Americans,  on  the  other  hand,  in  their  doctrine  of  the 
''broken  voyage"  insisted  that  the  voyage  to  France  originating  in  the 
neutral  territory  of  the  United  States  was  separate  and  distinct  from 
the  voyage  between  the  West  Indies  and  the  United  States,  and  that, 
as  both  voyages  were  innocent,  the  ships  engaged  in  them  were  not 
subject  to  capture.  Backed  by  the  power  of  a  big  navy,  the  British 
insisted  on  having  their  way  and  captured  hundreds  of  the  American 


JEFFERSONIAN  DEMOCRACY  215 

ships  concerned  in  the  trade.  Hard  as  this  was  for  the  Americans, 
it  could  not  be  expected  that  Great  Britain,  which  had  forced  France 
to  abandon  the  carrying  trade  with  the  French  West  Indies,  would 
willingly  allow  its  enemy  to  receive  this  aid  from  outside  ships  and  the 
neutral  Americans  to  reap  commercial  benefit  from  British  victories. 
His  Majesty's  courts  condemned  the  American  vessels  guilty  of  prac 
ticing  the  " broken  voyage,"  unless  the  owners  could  show  that  they 
had  honorably  shipped  the  goods  in  question  to  the  United  States  with 
the  intention  of  having  them  remain  there.  As  such  proof  was  dif 
ficult,  especially  to  the  suspicious  mind  of  the  British  court,  the  Ameri 
can  losses  were  heavy. 

In  1806-1807,  by  a  series  of  proclamations  or  Orders  in  Council, 
the  British  stretched  the  idea  of  a  paper  blockade  beyond  all  precedent, 
in  their  declaration  of  a  blockade  against  all  the  coast  of  Paper 
Europe  under  the  control  of  France,  to  be  effective  against  blockades, 
neutral  vessels,  unless  these  vessels,  seeking  the  prohibited  ports,  first 
called  at  a  British  port  and  there  paid  duty  on  their  cargoes.  Napoleon 
retaliated  with  the  Berlin  and  Milan  Decrees,  declaring  a  blockade  of 
all  British  ports  in  Europe  and  ordering  the  seizure  of  every  vessel 
touching  at  a  British  port  or  suffering  herself  to  be  stopped  and  searched 
by  the  British.  Of  all  Europe,  only  Sweden,  Russia,  and  Turkey  were 
open  to  the  trade  of  neutrals.  Since  the  belligerents  did  not  possess 
ships  enough  to  make  a  pretense  of  guarding  the  whole,  blockaded 
coast,  these  extensive  blockades  were  not  de  facto,  but  existed  on  paper 
only.  The  neutral  Americans,  whose  vessels  were  no  longer  free  to  go 
either  to  British  or  to  French  ports,  clung  to  their  former  contention 
that  international  law  recognized  no  such  thing  as  a  paper  blockade, 
and  in  spite  of  the  restrictions  they  continued  their  trade  with  the 
forbidden  ports. 

The  procedure  of  the  belligerents  in  enforcing  their  contentions  was 
exasperating  in  the  extreme  to  the  Americans.     The  right  of  the  bel 
ligerents  to  search  and  capture  neutral  ships  carrying  con-    Enforcement 
traband  of  war  or  intending  to  break  a  blockade  began,    of  the  paper 
it  was  contended,  the  moment  the   ship  entered  upon 
the  high  seas.     Protected  by  this  rule  the  British  hovered  off  New 
York  and  other  American  ports  to  search  all  outgoing  ships.    There 
could  be  no  formal  objection  to  this  as  long  as  the  arrest,  search,  and 
seizure  took  place  beyond  the  three-mile  limit,  to  which  a  nation's 
sovereignty  extends  into  the  sea;  but  this  practical  blockade  of  their 
ports,  when  they  themselves  were  not  parties  to  the  war  raging  in 
Europe,  seemed  to  the  Americans  an  undue  hardship. 

The  continued  impressment  of  American  citizens  by  the  British 

15 


216  NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 

cruisers  added  to  the  ill-will  between  the  two  nations.     Procedure 
was  usually  as  follows:  meeting  with  an  American  ship 

Continued  .  ,        -._.    .   .  ,  . 

impressment  of  commerce,  the  British  captain  would  stop  her  by  a 
seamen™*"1  s^ot  across  ner  DOW>  board  her,  search  her,  call  the  crew 
upon  deck,  inspect  them,  and  without  the  least  show  of 
judicial  fairness  arbitrarily  decide  that  certain  members  of  the  crew 
were  British  subjects  and  send  them  off  in  chains  to  serve  on  the 
British  ships.  It  was  difficult  to  distinguish  an  American  from  a 
British  subject,  resembling  one  another  as  they  did  in  appearance, 
language,  manners,  and  customs,  so  that  through  perfectly  natural, 
even  if  not  always  willful,  mistakes  of  identification,  many  an  American 
citizen  suffered  a  towering  indignity.  The  statement  was  made  in 
Congress  in  1806  that  at  that  time  between  2,500  and  3000  Americans 
were  performing  enforced  service  in  the  British  navy.  Frenchmen 
and  Americans  could  not  so  easily  be  mistaken  for  one  another,  and 
impressment  of  American  citizens  by  the  French  was  not  so  common. 

Evident  as  was  the  outrage,  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  fortunes 
of  the  British  navy  were  at  this  time  in  a  precarious  condition.  That 
Naturaliza-  ^  was  l°smg  thousands  of  sailors  at  a  time  when  the 
tion  and  ex-  services  of  these  were  of  supreme  importance  in  the 
struggle  with  France,  was  generally  admitted,  for  condi 
tions  were  better  and  wages  higher  on  the  American  than  on  the 
British  ships.  Outside  of  the  United  States,  too,  there  was  universal 
approbation  of  the  British  contention  of  "once  an  Englishman,  always 
an  Englishman,"  which  meant  the  denial  of  the  right  of  a  British  sub 
ject  to  divest  himself  of  British  citizenship  and  become  a  citizen  of 
another  country.  Such  a  one,  sailing  under  the  flag  of  his  adopted 
country  and  claiming  its  protection,  was  still,  in  the  eyes  of  the  British, 
a  subject  of  the  King,  a  deserter  liable  to  capture.  The  new  nation 
of  the  United  States,  in  need  of  willing  hands  to  develop  its  resources, 
was  the  only  prominent  power  to  subscribe  to  the  doctrine  of  naturaliza 
tion.  Nor  was  America  herself  consistent  on  the  question.  The 
President,  Congress,  and  the  courts  on  the  one  hand  affirmed  that  a 
citizen  of  another  country  could  transfer  his  allegiance  to  the  United 
States,  but,  on  the  other  hand,  they  refused  to  recognize  the  right  of  a 
citizen  of  the  United  States  to  expatriate  himself,  that  is,  to  become  a 
citizen  of  another  country.  The  right  of  expatriation  was  not  recog 
nized  by  the  United  States  till  1868. 

Beyond  the  question  whether  or  not  Great  Britain  retained  her  hold 
The  right  of  on  her  citizens  after  they  were  formally  adopted  as  citi- 
impressment.  zens  by  another  nation,  there  was  the  question  whether 
or  not  she  could  rightfully  take  by  force  from  the  deck  of  an  Ameri- 


JEFFERSONIAN  DEMOCRACY  217 

can  ship  those  of  her  citizens  who  made  no  pretense  to  naturali 
zation  in  the  United  States.  The  American  shipmasters  contended 
that  they  were  within  their  rights  when  they  availed  themselves  of  the 
services  of  the  sailors  of  every  nation,  and  that  so  long  as  these  men 
remained  on  an  American  ship  they  were  under  the  protection  of  the 
flag  of  the  United  States  and  could  not  be  taken  away  by  the  officials 
of  another  nation.  Moreover,  according  to  the  American  claims,  the 
deck  of  an  American  ship  was  American  soil,  on  which  British  officers 
had  no  right  to  exercise  any  authority  whatsoever.  Both  these  claims 
the  British  flatly  denied. 

Except  for  its  refusal  to  recognize  the  right  of  expatriation,  the 
United  States,  defender  of  the  rights  of  neutrals  in  time  of  war,  was 
advocating  principles  of  international  law  so  far  in  advance    The  united 
of  the  times  that  the  rest  of  the  world  did  not  accept  her    States  vindi- 
position  for  another  half  century.    The  delayed  acceptance, 
when  it  did  come,  was  a  pleasing  vindication  of  the  United  States  for 
the  stand  which  she  had  taken  in  a  trying  crisis. 

On  one  occasion  in  1807  a  British  ship,  the  man-of-war  Leopard, 
fired  on  an  American  warship,  the  Chesapeake,  and  impressed  four  of 
her  seamen  into  the  British  service.     In  the  excitement  of    An  aggra_ 
the  moment  President  Jefferson  might  have  begun  war  on    yated  case  of 
Great  Britain  with  the  enthusiastic  support  of  the  whole 
nation,  but  he  took  other  counsel. 

Out  of  his  desire  for  peace  the  President  gave  his  consent  to  the 
Non-Importation  Act  of  Congress,  to  bring  Great  Britain  to  terms,  but 
this  old  weapon  of  pre-revolutionary  days  made  no  impres-  e  , 

sion  on  the  unfriendly  British.  At  the  bidding  of  the  first  two 
President,  the  minister  to  Great  Britain,  James  Monroe, 
attempted  to  relieve  the  situation  by  a  treaty,  after  the 
fashion  of  the  Jay  treaty.  Besides  containing  no  renunciation  by  the 
British  of  the  right  of  impressment,  paper  blockade,  and  the  other 
objectionable  practices  on  the  sea,  the  Monroe  treaty  went  so  far  as 
to  dictate  what  duties  Congress  should  levy  on  the  importations  from 
the  West  Indies  in  order  to  constitute  the  voyage  from  the  United  States 
to  France  a  new  voyage,  without  infraction  of  the  Rule  of  1756,  and 
President  Jefferson  refused  to  send  the  treaty  to  the  Senate  for 
ratification. 

Congress,  still  clinging  to  the  idea  of  peace,  in  December,  1807, 
passed  the  Embargo  Act  at  the  suggestion  of  the  President,  to  starve 
the  belligerents   into   respectful  treatment   of  American    The  Embargo 
commerce.    Under  the  provisions  of  this  act,  which  for-    Act 
bade  American  ships  leaving  domestic  ports  for  the  ports  of  foreign 


2i8  NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 

countries  without  the  special  permission  of  the  President,  all  shipping 
between  the  United  States  and  Great  Britain  and  between  the  United 
States  and  France  practically  came  to  an  end.  Those  two  countries, 
however,  got  along  well  enough  without  the  American  food  products, 
and  the  most  disastrous  effects  of  the  restriction  were  felt  in  the 
United  States  itself,  where  thousands  of  sailors  were  thrown  out  of 
work  and  hundreds  of  ship  owners  ruined.  Earlier,  when  the  ships 
had  been  free  to  sail  at  their  own  risk,  the  owners  had  made  money 
in  spite  of  the  numerous  captures  at  the  hands  of  the  British  and 
the  French;  and  business  had  been  heavy,  as  may  be  judged  from  the 
fact  that  the  value  of  the  exports  from  the  United  States  advanced 
from  $26,000,000  in  1793  to  $108,000,000  in  1807,  the  year  before  the 
embargo.  The  commercial  classes  preferred  that  their  ships  should 
continue  to  run  the  risk  of  capture,  since  those  that  got  through  in 
safety  brought  enormous  profits.  Massachusetts,  Rhode  Island,  and 
Connecticut  denounced  the  embargo  and  the  measures  taken  to  secure 
its  enforcement  as  oppressive  and  unconstitutional,  while  Connecti 
cut,  bordering  close  on  nullification,  refused  the  aid  of  its  state  militia 
to  the  national  administration  for  carrying  out  the  act. 

After  a  year  of  dissatisfaction  and  hardship  on  the  seaboard  the 
embargo  was  repealed.  From  the  point  of  view  of  the  Democratic- 
The  repeal  Republican  doctrine  of  strict  construction  there  had  never 
of  the  act.  been  any  direct  constitutional  authority  to  institute  it  in 
the  first  place,  for  only  by  the  loosest  kind  of  construction  could  the 
power  to  kill  foreign  commerce,  involved  in  the  idea  of  an  embargo,  be 
derived  from  the  constitutional  power  of  Congress  to  regulate  foreign 
commerce. 

While  the  dissatisfaction  over  the  embargo  was  at  its  height  the 
country  was  called  upon  to  elect  a  new  president.  The  Democratic- 
The  presi-  Republicans  succeeded  in  maintaining  their  hold  on  the 
dential  elec-  government  in  spite  of  their  unpopular  handling  of  the 
commercial  situation.  In  a  conscious  attempt  to 
strengthen  the  precedent  in  favor  of  two  terms  only  for  the  executive, 
President  Jefferson  refused  a  third  nomination  at  the  hands  of  his  party. 
Said  he:  "  General  Washington  set  the  example  of  voluntary  retirement 
after  eight  years.  I  shall  follow  it.  And  a  few  more  precedents  will 
oppose  the  obstacle  of  habit  to  any  one  after  a  while,  who  shall  endeavor 
to  extend  his  term."  The  Secretary  of  State,  James  Madison,  who  was 
looked  upon  as  the  President's  candidate,  received  122  votes  and  the 
election,  to  47  for  Charles  Cotesworth  Pinckney,  who  was  for  a  thirt 
time  the  Federalist  candidate. 


JEFFERSONIAN  DEMOCRACY  219 

GENERAL  REFERENCES 

H.  ADAMS,  United  States,  I-IV;  MCMASTEK,  United  States,  II  and  III;  CHANNING, 
Jefersonian  System;  Contemporaries,  III,  344-407;  MORSE,  Thomas  Jefferson;  A.  C. 
LAUT,  Pathfinders;  GRINNELL,  Trails. 

SPECIAL  TOPICS 

1.  PURCHASE  OF  LOUISIANA.     OGG,  Opening  of  the  Mississippi,  495-539;  McMAS- 
TER,  United  States,  II,  625-635,  and  III,  1-41;  Contemporaries,  III,  363-385;  H.  ADAMS, 
United  States,  II,  25-135;  Epochs,  IV,  140-154;  Old  South  Leaflets,  V,  105,  and  VI,  128; 
ROOSEVELT,  Winning  of  the  West,  IV,  258-307;  BRUCE,  Expansion,  24-50. 

2.  AARON  BURR.     MCMASTER,  United  States,  III,  42-86;  H.  ADAMS,  United  States, 
II,  160-191,  and  III,  219-344;  W.  F.  McCALEB,  Aaron  Burr  Conspiracy;  Epochs,  IV, 
155-158,   and    180-185;    HILL,   Decisive   Battles   of  the   Law,    27-65;    ROOSEVELT, 
Winning  of  the  West,  IV,  258-307. 

3.  THE  EXPEDITION  OF  LEWIS  AND  CLARK.     A.  C.  LAUT,  Pathfinders,  307-333; 
THWAITES,  ED.,  Journals  of  the  Lewis  and  Clark  Expedition;  GRINNELL,  Trails,  154- 
252;  Epochs,  IV,  159-169;  N.  BROOKS,  First  Across  the  Continent;  ROOSEVELT,  Win 
ning  of  the  West,  IV,  308-343. 

4.  THE  EMBARGO  ACT.      MCMASTER,  United  States,  III,  276-338;  H.  ADAMS, 
United  States,  IV,  152-290,  317-360,  and  432-454;    Contemporaries,  III,  403-410; 
Epochs,  IV,  201-204. 

ILLUSTRATIVE  MATERIAL 

HALE,  Man  Without  a  Country,  and  Philip  Nolan's  Friends;  M.  E.  SEAWELL,  Decatur 
and  Somers;  J.  K.  PAULDING,  John  Bidl  and  Brother  Jonathan;  IRVING,  Knickerbocker 
History  of  New  York;  C.  F.  PIDGIN,  Blennerhassett. 

SUGGESTIVE  QUESTIONS 

Why  was  the  Democratic-Republican  party  in  Jefferson's  time  hostile  to  the  courts? 
State  the  differences  between  the  Federalists  and  the  Democratic-Republicans.  Why 
was  it  that  the  Democratic-Republicans  passed  few  important  laws  in  Congress? 
How  do  you  account  for  the  fact  that  the  United  States  consented  to  pay  tribute  to 
the  pirates  of  the  Mediterranean?  Give  the  British  side  of  the  dispute  over  the  rights 
of  neutrals  on  the  sea  in  time  of  war.  Why  did  the  Embargo  Act  fail?  Explain  what 
is  international  law.  How  does  it  grow?  What  were  the  mistakes  of  President 
Jefferson?  What  were  the  leading  issues  in  current  politics  before  the  voters  in  the 
presidential  campaigns  of  1804  and  1808? 


CHAPTER  XVII 
THE   WAR   OF   1812 


leaders  in 
President 
Madison's 
administra 
tion. 


PRELIMINARIES   OF   WAR 

ALTHOUGH  James  Madison  had  been  almost  continuously  in  the 
public  eye  since  the  opening  of  the  War  of  Independence,  and  although 
Th  rt"  1  during  that  long  time  he  had  rendered  distinguished  pub 
lic  service,  now  that  he  had  reached  the  supreme  goal  of 
political  preferment  his  administration  was  not  the  suc 
cess  that  his  admirers  had  anticipated.  He  was  a  strong 
thinker,  one  of  the  most  intellectual  of  American  Presi 
dents,  but  in  the  crisis,  when  war  with  Great  Britain  was  impending 

and  relations  with  France  were  in  a 

precarious  condition,  his  administra 
tive  ability  proved  hardly  equal  to  the 
strain.  His  cabinet,  too,  with  the  ex 
ception  of  Albert  Gallatin  and  Jame? 
Monroe,  was  distinctly  weak.  Per 
haps  the  most  prominent  man  of  the 
period  was  the  eloquent  young  Ken- 
tuckian,  Henry  Clay,  who  held  the 
post  of  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Rep 
resentatives.  Born  of  poor  parents  in 
Virginia  in  1777,  Clay  studied  law,  and 
at  the  age  of  nineteen  "went  west" 
into  Kentucky  to  seek  his  fortune. 
His  voice  and  his  eloquence  were  his 
fortune,  for  he  will  always  be  remem 
bered  as  Kentucky's  greatest  orator 
and  one  of  the  most  persuasive  speak 
ers  that  ever  appeared  on  the  floor  of 
Congress.  He  was  possessed  of  great  energy  and  capacity  for  leader 
ship,  and  held  a  foremost  position  in  the  councils  of  his  party  almost 
from  the  day  of  his  advent  into  national  politics.  He  was  the  idol  of 
the  West,  their  first  great  statesman.  With  him  in  Congress  were 
John  C.  Calhoun  of  South  Carolina,  another  young  man  destined  to 
prominence,  and  the  aged  pioneer,  John  Sevier  of  Tennessee. 

220 


JAMES  MADISON 


THE  WAR  OF   1812 


221 


Great  Britain  and  France  were  still  at  war,  and  each  power  still 
persisted  in  inflicting  on   the  neutral  commerce  of  the    More 
United  States  the  same  outrages  that  had  caused  trouble    trouble  with 
in  the  days  of  Washington,   Adams,  and  Jefferson.     At    tain  and 
the  very  end  of  Jefferson's  last  term  of  office  Congress  re-    France- 
luctantly  repealed  the  Embargo  Act  and  passed  another  superseding 
it,   known   as   the    Non-Intercourse 
Act,  by  the  terms  of  which  trade  was 
to  be  open  to  every  nation  but  Great 
Britain  and  France;  and  the  Presi 
dent  was  empowered  to  resume  com 
mercial  relations  with  either  one  of 
these  powers  which  should  first  give 
up  its  objectionable  practices.    Noth 
ing,  however,  was   accomplished   by 
this  measure.     In  another  year  the 
restrictions  of  the  act  expired,  and  in 
a  new  law,  known  as  "Macon's  Bill 
No.   2,"   Congress    provided  that  if 
one  of  the  offending  nations  should 
give  up   the   abusive   practices  and 
the   other   should    not,    the    restric 
tions    of    the    Non-Intercourse    Act 
were  to  be  revived  by  the  President 
against  the  nation  still  offending. 

For  a  short  time  it  seemed  as  if 
Great  Britain  were  ready  to  desist. 
Her  minister  at  Washington  agreed 

to  stop  the  attacks,  and  hundreds  of  ships,  laden  with  full  cargoes, 
put  to  sea.  The  British  government  promptly  repudiated  Misunder- 
the  act  of  the  minister,  rejected  the  treaty  which  he  had  standing  and 
signed  contrary  to  instructions,  called  him  home  in  dis 
grace,  and  ordered  the  seizure  of  the  unlucky  ships.  The  Emperor  of 
France  went  even  farther.  By  the  Bayonne  Decree,  1808,  he  con 
fiscated  all  the  American  ships  arriving  in  the  ports  of  France,  oh  the 
assumption  that  they  must  be  British  ships  illegally  flying  the  Ameri 
can  flag  since  no  American  vessels  could  legally  reach  France.  By 
the  Rambouillet  Decree,  issued  two  years  later,  Napoleon  sequestered 
over  a  hundred  more  American  ships,  in  retaliation,  as  he  said,  for  the 
Non-Intercourse  Act  of  the  United  States. 

Indignation  at  both  Great  Britain  and  France  was  at  fever  heat. 
It  was  plain  that  the  troubles  of  the  United  States  were  bound  to  end 


HENRY  CLAY 


222  NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 

in  war  either  with  one  nation  or  with  the  other.  After  twenty  years 
War  of  harsh  treatment  and  at  the  same  time  twenty  years  of 

inevitable.  national  growth,  the  patience  of  the  country  was  at  an 
end.  No  longer  would  the  peace-at-any-price  policy  of  the  com 
mercial  seaboard  satisfy  the  young  Americans  of  the  West,  who  felt 
that  war  was  a  necessity  if  the  national  honor  was  to  be  maintained, 
and  that  commercial  profits  must  no  longer  be  allowed  to  dictate  na 
tional  policy. 

Feeling  against  Great  Britain  was  increased  in  the  West  by  the 
belief  that  British  emissaries  were  inspiring  outbreaks  of  the  Indians. 
Renewed  The  Indians  m  the  Northwest  Territory,  after  their 
trouble  with  defeat  by  General  Wayne  in  1794,  had  remained  quiet  for 

the  Indians.          -,  f  -, 

almost  a  score  of  years,  when  suddenly  a  new  Indian 
leader  arose  in  the  person  of  Tecumseh,  who  formed  the  ambitious 
plan  of  uniting  the  Indians  of  the  various  tribes  in  one  grand 
assault  against  the  encroaching  whites.  William  Henry  Harrison, 
Governor  of  Indiana  Territory,  correctly  scented  the  Indian  unrest, 
and  in  1811  engaged  the  savages  in  battle  at  Tippecanoe  on  the 
Wabash  River  in  northern  Indiana.  Though,  like  Harmar  and  St. 
Clair  before  him,  he  allowed  himself  to  be  surprised,  he  retrieved  him 
self  and  won  a  victory.  The  fighting  began  in  the  dim  light  of  early 
morning  and  raged  at  the  very  tent  doors  of  the  soldiers.  Sixty  of 
the  whites  were  killed  and  more  than  one  hundred  wounded;  the  losses 
of  the  savages  were  unknown,  but  their  defeat  was  decisive  and  their 
power  completely  broken.  The  victory  took  place  several  hundred 
miles  farther  west  than  that  of  Wayne,  showing  that  the  whites  were 
pushing  on  in  their  march  in  that  direction.  The  same  scenes  were 
enacted  on  the  frontier  of  the  Southwest  a  little  later,  where  an  Indian 
massacre  near  Mobile  Bay  was  promptly  avenged  by  the  whites  under 
the  leadership  of  Andrew  Jackson. 

Whether  well  founded  or  not,  the  belief  was  general  in  the  United 
States  that  the  British  and  the  Indians  stood  together  as  allies  arid  that 
the  British  were  in  part  responsible  for  these  uprisings. 

THE  SECOND  WAR   OF  AMERICAN  INDEPENDENCE 

The  gathering  spirit  of  hostility  to  Great  Britain  invaded  the  Con 
gress  that  assembled  in  December,  1811.  Speaker  Clay,  the  most 
War  declared  arQlent  "war  hawk"  of  all,  so  composed  the  committees  in 
on  Great  the  House  of  Representatives  as  to  put  the  war  party  in 
complete  control  in  that  body;  and  the  Senate  was  of  the 
same  mind.  An  act  was  passed  to  increase  the  size  of  the  regular  army, 
the  President  was  authorized  to  enlist  the  services  of  fifty  thousand 


THE   WAR  OF  1812  223 

volunteers,  and  an  embargo,  like  that  of  1808,  was  laid  for  ninety  days 
on  foreign  commerce.  The  formal  declaration  of  war  against  Great 
Britain,  which  passed  the  House  of  Representatives  by  a  vote  of  79  to 
49  and  the  Senate  by  a  vote  of  19  to  13,  was  signed  by  the  President  June 
18,  1812.  The  existence  of  a  strong  minority  in  opposition,  centered 
mainly  in  commercial  New  England,  together  with  the  weakened  con 
dition  of  the  army  and  navy  under  Jefferson's  policy  of  retrenchment, 
and  the  diminished  national  revenue  did  not  constitute  favorable 
auspices  under  which  to  enter  upon  a  foreign  war;  but  " young  America  " 
had  its  way  and  the  nation. was  committed  to  the  conflict. 

One  day  before  the  declaration  of  war  by  the  United  States, 
Great  Britain  repealed  the  obnoxious  Orders  in  Council,  by  which  the 

blockade  of  the  French  ports  had  been  declared,  but  in    , 

.  ,  '  The  repeal 

the  absence  of  telegraphic  communications  with  Europe    pf  the  Brit- 

the  news  of  the  repeal  was  not  received  in  the  United 
States  till  after  Congress  had  taken  the  fatal  step. 

So  far  as  the  disregard  of  the  rights  of  neutrals  on  the  sea  in  time  of 
war  was  concerned,  France  was  to  all  intents  and  purposes  an  aggressor 
as  well  as  Great  Britain.  Both  nations  had  impressed  Reasons  for 

American  seamen  into  their  service,  and  both  had  dis-    tj6  choice  of 

,         .   ,          the  British  as 
regarded  the  American  contentions  concerning  the  rights    the  national 

of  neutrals,  but  in  each  case  the  British  were  the  greater  enemy- 
offenders.  From  the  beginning  of  trouble  in  1793  over  nine  hundred 
American  ships  had  been  seized  by  the  British  and  only  about  five  hun 
dred  and  fifty  by  the  French.  The  party  of  Jefferson  and  Madison, 
moreover,  had  always  had  a  fondness  for  France,  and  there  still  rankled 
bitter  memories  of  the  War  of  Independence,  so  that  from  sentiment  as 
well  as  from  the  extent  of  the  injuries  received,  choice  fell  upon  Great 
Britain  as  the  national  enemy.  In  the  West,  too,  there  was  a  hope 
that  Canada  might  be  wrested  from  Great  Britain,  as  the  thirteen 
colonies  of  the  seaboard  had  desired  in  the  days  of  the  Revolution. 
War  with  the  British  offered  opportunity  for  invasion  of  the  enemy's 
territory  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic,  whereas  in  a  war  with  France 
the  enemy  would  have  been  more  difficult  to  reach. 

Speaker  Clay  in  the  House  of  Representatives  enumerated  the 
causes  of  the  appeal  to  arms  as  follows:  the  attitude  of  Great  Britain 
toward  neutral  commerce,  the  impressment  of  American  Enumeration 
seamen,  the  instigation  of  the  Indians  to  hostilities,  and  of  the  causes 
the  refusal  to  give  indemnities  for  the  injuries  the  Ameri 
cans  had  received.  He  openly  confessed  his  desire  to  conquer  Canada. 
James  Monroe,  Secretary  of  State,  made  an  official  declaration  that 
6257  citizens  of  the  United  States  had  been  impressed  by  the  British, 


224 


NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 


and  "6257"  became   a  popular  watchword  of   the  war  party.     The 

Federalists  placed   the  number   of   cases   of  actual  impressment  of 

American  seamen  at  156. 

The  United  States  repeated  its  policy  of  1775  and  endeavored  at 

the  outset  to  wage  an  aggressive  war  and  to  capture  Canada.  The 
first  army  of  invasion,  under  General  Van  Rensselaer, 
reached  the  Canadian  side  of  the  Niagara  River,  where 
jt  was  turned  back  at  the  battle  of  Queenstown  Heights, 
and  the  second,  under  General  Smyth,  which  reached  the 

same  river,  suffered  a  like  fate.    In  the  west,  at  Detroit,  General  Hull, 


year  onh 
war  —  on 


SCALE:  OF   MILE? 


0  100  20G  300 

OPERATIONS  ALONG  THE  CANADIAN  BORDER 


who  had  seen  service  in  the  War  of  the  Revolution  and  was  now  far 
too  old  for  active  command,  surrendered  his  post  to  the  British  without 
a  shot,  for  the  purpose,  he  said  later,  of  saving  the  women  and  children 
from  the  scalping  knife  of  the  Indians.  He  was  tried  by  court  martial, 
convicted  of  cowardice,  and  sentenced  to  death,  but  was  pardoned 
by  the  President. 

A  glorious  beginning  on  the  sea  was  made  by  the  Americans  in  a 

series  of  four  victories,  the  most  notable  of  which  was  that 

year^the        of  the  Constitution  under  Captain  Hull,  a  nephew  of  Gen- 

tnersea0n  eral  Hull>  OV?r  the  Guerr™re  off  the  Gulf  °f  the  St  LaW" 

rence.     Seventy-nine  British  were  lost  in  the  encounter 

and  their  ship  was  completely  wrecked,  while  the  Americans  lost  in 


THE  WAR  OF   1812 


225 


killed  and  wounded  only  fourteen.  "A  small  affair  it  might  appear 
among  the  world's  battles,"  says  one  historian;  "it  took  but  a  half 
an  hour,  but  in  that  one  half  hour  the  United  States  of  America  rose 
to  Ihe  rank  of  a  first  class  power."  An  Englishman  is  reported  to 


U.  S.  FRIGATE  CONSTITUTION — "OLD  IRONSIDES" 

have  said  in  Parliament,  "It  cannot  but  be  too  deeply  felt  that  the 
sacred  spell  of  the  invincibility  of  the  British  navy  is  broken."  The 
navy  of  the  United  States  at  this  time  numbered  seventeen  ships, 
while  Great  Britain  had  over  one  thousand. 

In  the  autumn  of  1812  the  country  went  through  its  first  presidential 
election  in  time  of  war.  President  Madison  was  renominated  by  his 
party,  though  it  was  charged  that  he  secured  this  honor 
by  a  surrender  of  his  own  principles  to  those  of  the  war  presidential 
party  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  headed  by  Speaker 
Clay  and  John  C.  Calhoun.  DeWitt  Clinton  of  New 
York  ran  on  an  Independent  Democratic-Republican  ticket,  with 
the  indorsement  of  the  Federalists.  The  result  was  128  votes  for 
Madison  and  89  for  Clinton.  Every  northern  seaboard  state  as  far 
south  as  Maryland,  that  is,  the  commercial  states,  voted  against  the 
President,  and  the  agricultural  states  of  the  South  and  the  West  for 
him.  Vermont  and  Pennsylvania  separated  themselves  from  the 
rest  of  the  North  and  gave  their  votes  to  Madison. 

On  the  ocean,  in  the  second  year  of  the  war,  the  American  vessels 


226  NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 

were  gradually  bottled  up  by  the  superior  numbers  of  the  enemy's 
The  second  navy;  but  Commodore  (then  Commander)  Perry,  by  a 
year<  characteristic  piece  of  American  daring,  won  a  victory 

at  Put-in-Bay  on  Lake  Erie.  September  10,  1813.  Both  the  British 
and  the  Americans  by  this  time  realized  that  the  possession  of  Canada 
and  possibly  that  of  the  Northwest  Territory  of  the  United  States 
largely  depended  on  the  control  of  Lake  Erie;  and  the  two  fleets, 
about  evenly  matched,  met  to  decide  the  issue.  The  American  fleet 
of  nine  vessels  was  gathered  and  equipped  at  Erie,  Pennsylvania,  some 
of  the  ships  having  been  growing  trees  in  the  forest  only  a  few  months 
before.  Perry  had  never  been  in  action,  but  he  succeeded  in  defeating 
the  British;  and  he  fired  the  hearts  of  his  countrymen  by  his  laconic 
dispatch,  "We  have  met  the  enemy  and  they  are  ours;  two  ships,  two 
brigs,  one  schooner,  and  one  sloop." 

The  victorious  fleet  later  conveyed  an  army  under  General  Harri 
son  across  Lake  Erie  to  Canada,  where  a  fierce  land  battle  was  fought 
Success  and  against  the  combined  British  and  Indian  forces  on  the 
failure  in  Thames  River.  The  great  Tecumseh,  who  had  joined 
his  Indian  forces  to  those  of  the  British  as  soon  as  the 
war  was  declared,  was  killed,  the  British  defeated,  Detroit  won  back, 
and  the  Northwest  Territory  rendered  secure.  Attempts  to  invade 
Canada  from  New  York  State  again  failed. 

The  early  months  of  the  year  1814  were  marked  by  the  overthrow 
of  Napoleon  in  Europe  and  the  release  of  thousands  of  British  veterans 
The  third  for  service  in  America.  There  were  two  indecisive  con- 
year,  flicts  in  July  on  the  Canadian  side  of  the  Niagara  River 
at  Chippewa  and  Lundy's  Lane,  after  which  the  British,  encouraged 
by  the  arrival  of  reinforcements  from  across  the  Atlantic,  embarked 
on  a  bold  offensive  campaign  by  an  invasion  of  the  United  States. 
They  landed  on  the  coast  of  Maine,  the  eastern  part  of  which  they 
occupied  till  the  end  of  the  war,  and  in  August  they  made  a  dash  up 
the  Chesapeake  Bay  and  the  Potomac  River.  The  capital  city  of 
Washington  was  taken  and  Baltimore  threatened.  President  Madison 
and  the  cabinet  were  forced  to  flee  in  haste  before  the  invaders  to 
escape  capture.  Such  priceless  treasures  as  Stuart's  portrait  of 
Washington  and  the  original  draft  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
were  saved  only  by  the  wit  of  Mrs.  Madison.  Some  of  the  official 
records  were  carried  to  places  of  safety  by  the  officers  of  the  govern 
ment,  but  many  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  British  and  were  destroyedo 
The  White  House,  the  Capitol,  and  other  public  buildings  were  burned. 
All  was  done  under  the  direction  and  in  the  presence  of  command- 


THE  WAR  OF  1812 


227 


ing  officers.    The    British  defended  their  course  by  the  claim  that  it 

was  a  just  retaliation  for  the  destruction  of  the  capitol  buildings  of 

Upper    Canada   at    York    (Toronto) 

by  the  Americans  in  1813.     Shortly 

before    the    enemy  fell    back    from 

their  attempt  on  Baltimore  a  young 

American     lawyer,      Francis     Scott 

Key,  was  detained  overnight  by  the 

British,   to  whom  he   had   gone   to 

seek  the  release  of  a  friend  held   as 

a    prisoner.     In    the    morning,   be 

holding  his  country's   flag  still   fly 

ing    over   Fort    McHenry   in   Balti 

more,  he  wrote  the  national  anthem, 

"The  Star  Spangled  Banner.'' 

The  force  of  invasion  was  felt  in 
two  more  places.  Less  than  one  month 
after  the  sack  of  Washington  Sir 
George  Prevost,  with  a  British  force 
somewhat  less  than  that  of  Burgoyne 
thirty-seven  years  before,  marched 
south  from  the  Valley  of  the  St. 


SCALE  OF  MILES 


OPERATIONS  AROUND  WASHINGTON 


Lawrence  over   Burgoyne's   old 


route,  in  a  determined  effort  to  cut  the  United  States  into 


P 


two  parts,  to  separate  the  now  half-hearted  New  England  theBritish 
states  from  the  more  enthusiastic  West  and  South.  He  was  JiJa^iain 
supported  by  a  formidable  fleet  on  Lake  Champlain.  His 
first,  and  as  it  proved,  the  decisive  clash  with  the  Americans  came  on 
September  n,  a  year  and  one  day  after  Perry's  victory  on  Lake  Erie, 
and  the  victory  of  the  American  Captain  Macdonough,  only  thirty  years 
old,  at  the  head  of  the  little  fleet  on  Lake  Champlain,  in  the  harbor  of 
Plattsburg,  was  quite  as  brilliant  as  that  of  Perry.  The  ships  of  the 
foe  were  larger,  more  numerous,  and  better  equipped  than  those  of  their 
opponents;  yet  after  a  battle  of  less  than  three  hours  they  were  forced 
to  strike  their  colors.  Prevost's  army  on  the  same  day  fought  an  in 
decisive  land  battle  near  the  scene  of  the  naval  struggle,  and  then  re 
treated  back  to  Canada. 

The  last  battle  of  the  war  and  the  last  attempt  of  the  enemy  to 
invade  the  soil  of  the  United  States  occurred  on  January  The  victory 
8,  1815,  at  New  Orleans,  where  the  British  veterans  from  at  New 
the  wars  against  Napoleon  were  met  in  a  terrific  battle 
by  the  frontiersmen  of  the  Southwest  under  Andrew  Jackson.     The 


228 


NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 


British  charged  impetuously  over  the  flat  open  country,  and  of  their 
force  of  six  thousand  lost  their  leader,  General  Pakenham,  and  two 
thousand  one  hundred  and  thirty-seven  men,  while  the  Americans, 
with  a  smaller  force,  from 
behind  their  hastily  con 
structed  intrenchments,lost 
seventy-one.  The  stake  of 
the  battle  was  nothing  less 
than  the  possession  of  the 
Louisiana  country,  and  as 
the  savior  of  this  vast  do 
main  Andrew  Jackson  won 
a  secure  place  in  the  hearts 
of  his  countrymen. 

The   opposition   of    the 
New  Englanders  to  the  war, 


F**ffjW    <^C 

£S/^< 

s    \ 

'"^M/*  £  -     ; 

mff-fasl 

>      '» 


^^V^vf,- 


SCALE    OF   MILES 


EXPEDITION  AGAINST  NEW   ORLEANS 


The  commer-    like  their  oppo- 
ciaiopposi-       sition   to    the 

tion  of  New 

England  to        Embargo  Act 

the  war.  in   lgogj    wag 

chiefly  commercial  in  its 
motive,  for  war  and  em 
bargo  alike  tended  to  di 
minish  the  profits  of  their  commerce  on  the  sea.  The  $26,000,000  of 
exports  of  the  year  1793,  which  had  reached  $108,000,000  in  1807,  fell 
to  $7,000,000  in  1814.  To  recompense  themselves  the  ship  owners 
took  to  privateering,  just  as  they  had  during  the  War  of  the  Revo 
lution;  and  they  contrived  to  bring  back  to  the  home  ports  almost 
two  thousand  British  commercial  vessels  as  prizes.  This,  however 
was  a  game  that  two  could  play,  and  it  is  quite  certain  that  the 
American  losses  in  privateering  equaled  their  gains. 

The  dissatisfied  spirit  of  New  England  was  manifested  by  the 
militia  of  Massachusetts,  who  refused  to  march  at  the  command  of  the 

President;  by  the  several  state  legislatures,  which  passed 
Other  phases     _  J 

of  New  laws  to  harass  the  national  administration  in  the  conduct 

opposition  °^  the  war>  anc*  by  the  people  themselves,  who  refused  to 
lend  their  money  to  the  government  in  the  crisis  as 
rapidly  as  the  war  leaders  desired.  To  the  national  loan  of  $11,- 
000,000,  authorized  by  Congress  in  1812,  the  New  Englanders,  though 
possessed  of  a  large  part  of  the  wealth  of  the  country,  subscribed  only 
$1,000,000.  Still  they  furnished  more  money  than  the  less  populous 
states  which  urged  the  war,  more  men  than  was  their  proportionate 


THE  WAR  OF  1812  229 

share,  and  the  hardships  of  the  war,  such  as  depredations  on  the  coast, 
and  damage  to  shipping,  came  chiefly  upon  them. 

In  the  secret  Hartford  Convention  c.f  1814,  delegates  from  five  New 
England  states  debated  plans  for  further  resistance  to  the  national 
government,  and  two  of  the  states  sent  commissioners  to  lay  The  Hartford 
certain  amendments  of  the  Constitution,  proposed  by  the  Convention, 
convention,  before  the  government  in  Washington.  The 
movement  was  dominated  by  the  spirit  of  strict  construction  and  states* 
rights,  such  as  had  cropped  cut  earlier  in  New  England.  The  power 
of  drafting  the  militia  of  the  states  "for  the  defence  of  the  frontier,  is  not 
delegated  to  Congress,"  ran  the  remonstrance,  and  against  such  measures 
of  the  national  government  the  states  were  called  upon  to  "protect" 
themselves.  An  arrangement  between  the  national  government  and  the 
states  was  also  urged,  whereby  the  latter  might  "  assume  upon  them 
selves  the  defence  of  their  territory  against  the  enemy.''  The  step, 
however,  was  ill-timed,  since  the  war  was  already  ending  with  enthusi 
asm  over  Jackson's  victory  at  New  Orleans  and  over  a  satisfactory 
treaty  of  peace,  and  the  New  Englanders  were  discredited. 

The  country  was  still  rejoicing  over  Jackson's  victory,  when  the 
news  arrived  from  Europe  that  on  the  day  before  Christmas,  1814, 
two  weeks  before  the  battle  of  New  Orleans,  a  treaty  of    The  treaty 
peace  had  been  signed  at  Ghent  in  Belgium  by  the  repre-    of  peace  at 
sentatives  of   the  two  warring  powers.      Neither  party 
gained  territory  by  the  agreement  and  neither  paid  indemnity  to  the 
other;  the  British  did  not  open  their  home  ports  nor  those  in  the  West 
Indies  to  the  commerce  of  the  United  States;  they  did  not  renounce 
the  right  of  impressment,  and  they  refused  to  admit  error  in  their 
treatment  of  neutral  commerce  on  the  sea;  but  peace,  the  one  thing 
gained  in  the  treaty,  was  grateful  to  all. 

Time's  vindication  of  the  Americans,  after  the  treaty  of  peace,  was 
not  long  withheld.  No  more  cases  of  impressment  of  American  seamen 
by  British  men-of-war  have  been  recorded.  In  1815,  vindication 
shortly  after  the  treaty  of  peace,  in  a  "  convention  of  of  the  United 
commerce  and  navigation"  Great  Britain  opened  her 
home  ports,  and  fifteen  years  later  those  in  the  British  West  Indies, 
to  the  trading  vessels  of  the  United  States.  More  than  forty  years 
later,  in  1856,  in  common  with  France  and  other  European  states, 
she  subscribed  to  the  following  rules  of  international  law,  enunciated 
at  Paris,  all  of  which  represent  the  position  of  the  United  States  in 
the  days  of  Washington,  Adams,  Jefferson,  and  Madison:  "First,  the 
neutral  flag  covers  enemy's  goods,  with  the  exception  of  contraband  of 
war;  second,  neutral  goods,  with  the  exception  of  contraband  of  war, 


230  NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 

are  not  liable  to  capture  under  enemy's  flag;  third,  blockades,  in  order 
to.be  binding,  must  be  effective  —  that  is  to  say,  maintained  by  a  force 
sufficient  really  to  prevent  access  to  the  coast  of  the  enemy."  In 
these  rules  of  Paris  the  subscribing  nations  also  gave  up  privateering. 
The  Americans  have  likewise  been  vindicated  in  their  stand  on  impress 
ment.  The  nations  now  uniformly  follow  the  principle  that  the  deck 
of  a  ship  is  to  be  regarded  as  the  soil  of  the  country  whose  flag  it  flies, 
and  that  the  flag  protects  the  sailors  under  it.  The  leading  nations 
also  now  accept  naturalization  and  expatriation. 

THE  WAVE  OF  NATIONALISM  AFTER  THE  WAR 

Most  writers  agree  in  characterizing  the  war  of  1812-1815  as  the 
" Second  War  of  American  Independence."  Its  results  in  foreign 
Results  of  affairs  wefe  happy  in  two  respects.  First,  it  freed  the 
the  war  in  commerce  of  the  United  States  on  the  seas  from  inter- 
ference  by  European  powers;  and  second,  it  marked  the 
end  of  any  close  connection  between  the  politics  of  the 
United  States  and  the  affairs  of  Europe.  Henceforth  national  develop 
ment  was  to  proceed  along  independent  lines,  apart  from  the  rest  of 
the  world. 

Striking  changes  were  taking  place  in  domestic  politics.  The 
Democratic-Republicans  emerged  from  the  war  in  a  dominant  position 
Changes  in  politically,  but  with  the  principles  of  their  opponents 
domestic  adopted  as  their  own.  The  Federalists,  discredited  by 
their  attitude  in  regard  to  the  war,  were  fast  losing 
standing  as  a  party.  Their  rank  and  file  went  over  to  the  Democratic- 
Republicans,  bringing  to  the  latter  ideas  of  a  strong  national  govern 
ment  in  conflict  with  Jefferson's  position  of  limited  national  powers. 
This  tendency  of  the  Democratic-Republicans  toward  nationalism  was 
increased  by  the  responsibilities  of  government.  Just  as  Jefferson 
had  forsaken  his  principles  of  strict  construction  in  the  emergencies  of 
administration,  so  his  party  now  exercised  powers  which,  as  an  opposi 
tion  party,  it  had  resisted  the  right  of  the  Federalists  to  exercise.  The 
leading  measures  of  the  fourteenth  Congress  (1815-1817)  revealed 
the  strength  of  these  newer  tendencies  in  the  ruling  party. 

The  first  important  act  of  this  Congress  was  to  set  up  the  Second 
Bank  of  the  United  States,  to  take  the  place  of  the  First  Bank  of  the 

United  States,  which  had  been  allowed  to  pass  out  of 
The  Second  ...  .  ,  .„ 

Bank  of  the      existence  at  the  expiration  of  its  charter  in  1811,  killed 

Stefed  ^7  Democratic-Republican  votes.     Without  the  aid  of  the 

national  institution,  the  finances  of  the  country  during 

the  war  went  from  bad  to  worse,  and  banking  business  fell  into  the 


THE  WAR  OF  1812  231 

hands  of  more  than  one  hundred  new  banks  chartered  by  the  states. 
Under  the  inharmonious  and  often  unsound  banking  laws  of  the  sepa 
rate  states,  the  new  banks  issued  their  notes  for  circulation  as  money 
just  as  had  the  bank  of  the  United  States,  but  whereas  the  notes  of 
the  latter,  with  coin  back  of  them  in  the  vaults  of  the  bank,  could  be 
turned  into  coin  at  any  time  and  hence  circulated  everywhere  at  their 
face  value,  the  notes  of  the  smaller  banks,  with  little  or  no  gold  back 
of  them,  could  not  usually  be  turned  into  coin  at  the  option  of  the 
holder  and  fluctuated  in  value  like  the  paper  money  of  Revolutionary 
days.  Things  came  to  such  a  pass  before  the  peace  of  1815  that  all 
the  state  banks  outside  of  Massachusetts  formally  refused  to  redeem 
any  of  their  notes  in  coin. 

In  this  strait  and  under  the  spell  of  the  nationalizing  influences  of 
the  war,  the  Democratic-Republicans  took  the  step,  which  five  years 
earlier  they  had  refused  to  take,  of  chartering  the  Second    Nature  of 
Bank  of  the  United  States.     In  most  respects  the  new    the  new 
bank  was   like   its   predecessor.     Its   capital   stock   was 
$35,000,000  as  against  $10,000,000  formerly;  it  received  the  govern 
ment  money  on  deposit  and  loaned  it  out  at  interest,  and  its  notes, 
well  secured  by  coin,  circulated  among  the  people  at  par,  and  were 
acceptable  everywhere.     A  disturbing  element  from  which  the  first 
bank  had  not  suffered,  was  the  existence  of  the  state  banks,  ever 
jealous  for  their  separate  rights  and  privileges  and  ready  to  harass  the 
larger  institution  at  every  turn. 

Manufacturing  industries  had  been  struggling  to  establish  them 
selves  since  the  beginning  of  the  Federal  government,  and  now  at  the 
close  of  the  war  they  were  profoundly  affected  by  the  Effect  of  the 
changed  conditions.  The  hopes  of  Washington,  Hamil-  waronmanu- 
ton,and  the  Federalists  that  they  might  build  up  manu 
facturing  in  the  United  States  by  a  protective  tariff  had  been  based 
largely  on  their  knowledge  of  conditions  in  Great  Britain  at  that  time. 
In  the  industrial  revolution  which  had  set  in  in  that  country  about 
1760,  manufacturing  had  made  rapid  strides.  A  series  of  great  inven 
tions  furthered  its  progress.  The  most  fundamental  of  all  was  the 
steam  engine,  invented  by  James  Watt  in  1769  and  rapidly  applied  to 
all  branches  of  manufacturing.  Through  the  joint  work  of  Har- 
greaves,  Arkwright,  and  Crompton  the  old-fashioned  domestic  spin 
ning  wheel  for  the  spinning  of  yarn  was  supplanted  by  machinery 
which  would  spin  several  thousand  threads  at  once.  Cartwright  in 
vented  a  power  loom  to  do  away  with  weaving  by  hand.  As  a  result 
of  these  inventions  the  British  rapidly  developed  from  an  agricultural 
into  a  manufacturing  nation. 

16 


232  NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 

In  spite  of  strict  laws  passed  in  Parliament  to  prevent  the  exporta 
tion  of  the  wonder-working  machinery  from  Great  Britain,  plans 
The  new  an<^  m°dels  got  through  to  the  United  States,  and  Samuel 
processes  of  Slater,  "the  father  of  American  manufactures,"  set  up 
ing^ifthe1*"  the  first  complete  cotton  spinning  machinery  in  the 
United  United  States  at  Pawtucket,  Rhode  Island,  in  1789. 

With  a  supply  of  raw  material  close  at  hand  in  the  cotton 
fields  of  the  Southern  States,  there  was  every  reason  to  hope  that  the 
United  States  would  as  speedily  turn  to  cotton  manufacturing  as  had 
Great  Britain.  The  new  tariff  after  1789  was  expected  to  encourage 
such  a  tendency. 

The  profits  of  the  neutral  commerce  on  the  seas  during  the  wars 
in  Europe  temporarily  retarded  the  development  of  manufacturing  in 
The  Indus-  the  United  States,  but  the  pendulum  began  to  swing  in  the 
tiorJhf  the""  °PP°site  direction  with  the  Embargo  Act  of  1807,  the  Non- 
United  Intercourse  Act,  "Macon's  Bill  No.  2,"  and  the  War  of 
1812-1815.  Floating  capital,  effectually  shut  out  from 
neutral  commerce  and  under  the  necessity  of  finding  some  form 
of  investment,  turned  to  manufacturing.  Now  began  in  earnest  the 
industrial  revolution  in  the  United  States.  In  1803  there  were  five 
cotton  factories  in  the  United  States,  equipped  with  a  few  thousand 
spindles,  and  in  1808  fifteen  factories  with  8000  spindles.  In  1811  the 
number  of  spindles  had  reached  80,000  and  in  1815,  500,000.  Whereas 
in  1803  only  1000  bales  of  cotton  were  consumed  in  these  factories, 
the  consumption  in  1815  reached  90,000  bales  and  the  value  of  the 
manufactured  product  was  estimated  at  $24,000,000.  In  the  first 
factories  the  spinning  was  done  by  machinery  and  the  weaving  by  hand. 
Cartwright's  power  loom  for  weaving  was  first  installed  in  the  United 
States  by  Francis  C.  Lowell,  in  his  factory  in  Waltham,  Massachusetts, 
in  1811.  The  development  of  woolen  factories  was  hampered  by  the 
lack  of  good  domestic  wool;  yet  the  value  of  the  woolen  goods  made 
in  the  new  factories  for  the  year  1815  was  $19,000,000.  In  a  few 
years  $50,000,000  had  been  invested  in  cotton  and  woolen  manufactur 
ing  alone.  Iron  mills  also  sprang  up,  especially  in  Pennsylvania. 

The  extent  of  the  industrial  revolution  in  the  United  States  was 
reflected  in  the  rapid  growth  of  new  centers  of  population,  as  capital 
New  manu-  turned  from  ocean  commerce  to  manufacturing.  The 
facturing  prosperity  of  Newport,  Rhode  Island,  Salem  and  New- 
buryport,  Massachusetts,  Portsmouth,  New  Hampshire, 
and  Hallowell,  Maine,  with  their  seafaring  population,  their  tra 
ditions  of  the  sea,  and  their  stately  mansions,  now  began  slowly 
to  decline  before  the  rising  importance  of  the  new  factory  centers, 


THE  WAR  OF  1812 


233 


such  as  Providence,  Rhode  Island,  Fall  River,  Lowell,  and  Lawrence, 
Massachusetts,  Manchester,  New  Hampshire,  and  Lewiston,  Maine. 
In  most  instances  the  new  industrial  activities  were  centered  on  the 
streams  of  New  England,  where  the  falls  and  swift  currents  furnished 
cheap  and  abundant  power. 

While  the  manufactures  of  Great  Britain  were  excluded  from  the 
United  States  by  unfriendly  commercial  relations  and  then  by  war, 

the  newly  established  American  factories  had  a  monopoly 

r    i_     i,  i  i  ^   •      j  j-i          on.  The  "infant 

of  the  home  market  and  thrived  accordingly.     Then  peace    industries  " 

let  down  the  bars  and  overwhelmed  the  "  infant  indus- 
tries"  with  a  flood  of  cheap  British  goods.  In  two  years 
the  value  of  importations  rose  from  $13,000,000  to  $147,000,000. 
The  cheap  foreign  goods 
were  acceptable  to  the 
masses  of  the  people,  but 
to  the  manufacturers  they 
spelled  ruin.  The  necessity 
of  protecting  the  "  infant 
industries"  was  apparent; 
and  this,  as  well  as  the  rais 
ing  of  an  additional  reve 
nue  to  discharge  the  war 
debt  of  $80,000,000,  was 
the  aim  of  the  tariff  law  of 
1816.  The  principle  of  the 
protective  tariff,  once  em 
braced  by  the  Federalists 
and  opposed  by  the  Demo 
cratic-Republicans,  was  now 
adopted  by  the  latter  in 
their  new  devotion  to  na 
tional  supervision  of  the 
various  interests  of  the 
country. 

The  invention  of  the  cotton  gin,  or  engine,  by  Eli  Whitney  in  1793 
brought  about  a  sudden  increase  in  the  supply  of  raw  material,  which 
greatly  facilitated  the  growth  of  cotton  manufacturing.    The  cotton 
Whitney,  a  young  graduate  of  Yale   College,  went   to    gm- 
South  Carolina  as  a  school-teacher.     Noticing  the  slaves  picking  the 
seed  out  of  the  cotton,  each  one  succeeding  in  cleaning  a  pound  or  so 
a  day,  he  set  his  Yankee  ingenuity  to  the  task  of  devising  a  method  of 
performing  the  work  with  greater  rapidity,  and  produced  a  machine 


WHITNEY'S  COTTON  GIN 


234  NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 

by  the  aid  of  which  a  single  negro  could  clean  three  hundred  pounds 
of  cotton  in  one  day.  In  the  year  1784  the  country  exported  but  a 
few  thousand  pounds  of  cotton,  but  ten  years  after  the  invention 
of  the  gin,  the  annual  exports  reached  50,000,000  pounds.  The  cotton 
crop  of  85,000,000  pounds  in  1810  reached  160,000,000  pounds  in  1820. 
Whitney  derived  little  financial  return  from  the  gin,  yet  seldom  has  a 
single  invention  exerted  greater  influence,  both  economic  and  political. 
The  way  was  open  for  the  cotton  growing  industry  to  expand  almost 
indefinitely,  while  that  of  cotton  manufacturing  was  sure  of  an  increas 
ing  supply  of  raw  material.  The  cotton  planters  of  the  entire  South, 
the  cotton  manufacturers  of  England  and  New  England,  profited 
by  the  invention  to  the  extent  of  millions  of  dollars;  and  with  Watts, 
Hargreaves,  Arkwright,  Crompton,  and  Cartwright,  Whitney  was 
numbered  among  the  benefactors  of  the  race  for  making  possible  a 
cheap  fabric  for  clothing.  At  the  same  time,  the  cotton  gin,  as  we 
shall  see,  fastened  negro  slavery  more  securely  upon  the  Southern 
States  and  encouraged  the  spread  of  slavery  to  newly  forming  states 
in  the  lower  Mississippi  Valley. 

Along  with  their  establishment  of  a  national  bank  and  the  encour 
agement  which  they  gave  to  manufacturing  enterprise  by  the  pro- 
Internal  tectiye  tariff,  the  Democratic-Republicans  after  the  War 
improve-  of  1812-1815  exhibited  their  tendencies  toward  nationalism 
thTnational  in  the  favor  with  which  they  looked  upon  improvement  of 
government,  transportation  facilities  by  the  national  government. 
There  had  been  agitation  for  undertakings  of  this  sort  from  the 
very  beginning  of  the  national  government  in  1789,  but  while  the 
statesmen  of  the  period  were  directing  their  efforts  toward  organ 
izing  the  government  on  a  sound  basis  and  defending  the  neutral 
rights  of  the  United  States  on  the  sea,  the  movement  for  national 
internal  improvements  gathered  strength  but  slowly.  It  had  been 
the  desire  for  better  transportation  facilities  between  the  seaboard  and 
the  new  western  lands  of  Congress  that  had  led  indirectly  to  the  con 
stitutional  convention  of  1787.  After  the  Constitution  went  into 
effect  the  admission  into  the  Union  of  new  states  west  of  the  mountains 
brought  into  both  houses  of  Congress  vigorous  advocates  of  the  con 
struction  of  roads  and  canals  at  the  national  expense.  The  very 
hardships  of  their  journeys  over  the  mountains  between  Washington 
and  the  West  impressed  on  the  minds  of  these  legislators  the  necessi 
ties  of  the  situation. 

In  Jefferson's  time  pressure  was  brought  to  bear  upon  the  President 
and  upon  Congress  to  allow  the  national  construction  of  roads  to  the 
new  lands  and  thus  to  facilitate  travel  to  the  West.  Jefferson's 


THE  WAR  OF   1812 


235 


desire  was  that  the  states  themselves  should  construct  the  desired 
highways  for  this  migration,  but   the   states  held  back,    The  Cumber- 
and  before  Jefferson  left  office  he  gave  his  official  con-    land  Road- 
sent  to  the  construction  of  a  single  national  road,  called  the  Cumber 
land  Road,  running  from  Cumberland,  Maryland,  on  the  Potomac, 


THE  CUMBERLAND  ROAD 


for  a  more 
extensive 
programme  of 
national  im 
provements. 


to  Ohio,  Indiana,  and  Illinois.  This  great  undertaking  was  com 
pleted  in  1838  at  a  total  expenditure  of  slightly  over  $4,000,000.  So 
long  as  the  road  remained  in  the  hands  of  the  Federal  government  it 
was  free  to  all  without  the  payment  of  tolls;  but  when  the  states, 
through  which  the  road  passed,  acquired  it  by  gift  of  the  government 
in  the  thirties,  toll  gates  were  set  up  along  its  course. 

Enthusiasts,  who  had  faith  in  the  future  of  their  country,  called 
upon  Congress,  after  the  war  had  strengthened  the  spirit  of  nationalism, 
to  discard  the  cautious  policy  of  a  single  road  for  a  general  The  demand 
policy  of  improvements  which  would  involve  the  govern 
ment  construction  of  roads  and  canals  in  every  part  of  the 
country.  This  sweeping  programme  was  put  through 
Congress  in  the  "Bonus  Bill,"  devoting  the  million  and  a 
half  of  money  to  be  paid  to  the  government  by  the  Second  Bank  of  the 
United  States  for  its  charter,  to  carrying  out  the  desired  improvements. 
In  passing  the  measure,  the  Democratic-Republicans  of  the  Fourteenth 
Congress,  friendly  to  the  national  bank  and  to  the  fostering  of  manu 
factures  by  a  protective  tariff,  were  again  in  the  old  position  of  the 
Federalists.  Calhoun  of  South  Carolina,  in  warm  advocacy  of  the 
policy,  pointed  out  how  the  country  had  suffered  during  the  late  war 
from  lack  of  proper  means  of  transportation  for  moving  the  troops; 
he  maintained  not  only  that  commercial  prosperity  required  improved 
means  of  transportation,  but  that  the  security  of  the  Union  of  the 
states  depended  upon  it.  Disunion,  he  protested,  would  be  the  great 
est  of  calamities.  In  reply  to  those  who  opposed  the  measure  out  of 
regard  for  strict  construction  of  the  Constitution,  he  cited  the  con 
struction  of  the  Cumberland  Road  as  a  precedent  and  the  "  general 


236 


NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 


welfare"  clause  of  the  Constitution  as  authority  for  the  work;  in  con 
clusion  he  asked,  "If  we  are  restricted  in  the  use  of  our  money  to  the 
enumerated  powers,  on  what  principle  can  the  purchase  of  Louisiana 
be  justified?" 

President  Madison  vetoed  the  Bonus  Bill,  although  he  had  signed 

the  bank  and  tariff  bills.    Like  Jefferson,  he  believed  that  the  improve- 

ments  were  desirable,  but  that  Congress  could  not  con- 

tion  o?  Presi-    struct  them  till  a  constitutional  amendment   had   been 

Madison  passed   definitely  giving  it   this  power.     The  President 

was  upholding  the  traditional  principles  of  his  party,  while 

Congress,  discarding  consistency,  was  responding  to  the  demands  of 

the  growing  nation. 

The  invention  of  the  steamboat  by  Robert  Fulton  in  1807  greatly 
increased  popular  interest  in  problems  of  transportation.  Like  many 
The  steam-  another  genius,  Fulton  was  ridiculed  when  he  sought  to 
boat.  give  the  £rst  public  exhibition  of  his  device,  but  the 

crowds  that  gathered  at  the  wharves  of  New  York  to  jeer  at  "  Fulton's 


THE  "  CLERMONT" 


folly"  remained  to  behold  his  triumph,  for  "the  thing  moved."  John 
Fitch  of  Connecticut  had  invented  a  steamboat  in  the  days  just  after 
the  Revolutionary  War,  but  he  failed  to  make  it  a  commercial  success 
and  in  despair  committed  suicide.  The  magnitude  of  the  achievement 
of  Fitch  and  Fulton  is  impressive,  when  we  reflect  that  George  Wash 
ington  and  Napoleon  Bonaparte  used  practically  the  same  means  of 
transportation  over  the  surface  of  the  earth  as  did  Alexander  the 
Great  and  Julius  Caesar.  For  thousands  of  years  wheeled  vehicles, 
rowboats?  and  sailboats  had  been  in  use  without  any  virtual  improve 
ment,  till  Fulton's  Clermontj  propelled  by  steam,  passed  up  the  Hudson 


THE   WAR  OF   1812 


237 


from  New  York  to  Albany.     The  utilization  of  steam  for  land  trans 
portation  followed  within  twenty  years. 


THE   FRONTIER   IN    1815 


The  changes  in  the  country  west  of  the  mountains,  since  the  begin 
nings  of  Tennessee,  Kentucky,  and  Ohio  a  half  century  earlier,  were 
marked.     Sevier,  Robertson,  and  Boone  had  blazed  their    changes  in 
way  through  the  forests  or  followed  the  paths  of  the  In-    the  West 


FIRST  STEAMBOAT  FROM  PITTSBURG  TO  NEW  ORLEANS 

dians  and  wild  animals.  Less  than  a  half  century  later,  Henry  Clay, 
representative  of  the  state  of  Kentucky  passed  up  the  Ohio  by  steamboat 
and  availed  himself  of  the  advantages  of  the  Cumberland  Road  on 
his  way  east  to  the  seat  of  government.  The  first  steamboat  to  appear 
in  the  West  was  launched  on  the  Ohio  at  Pittsburg,  Pennsylvania,  in 
1811,  and  by  1822  one  hundred  such  craft  were  calling  at  the  port  of 
New  Orleans  alone  and  scores  at  other  western  river  ports. 

The  cotton  gin  as  well  as  the  steamboat  stimulated  western  set 
tlement.     When  Whitney  invented  the  gin,  cotton  was  raised  mainly 
in  the  seaboard  states  of  Georgia  and  South  Carolina,  but    Rapjd  exten- 
its  culture  spread  rapidly  into  North  Carolina,  Virginia,    sion  of  cot- 
Alabama,   Mississippi,  Louisiana,   and  Tennessee.     The 
three  last-named  states,  with  their  immensely  rich  bottom  lands  in  the 
valley  of  the  Mississippi,  along  with  the  neighboring  state  of  Ala 
bama,  were  raising  one- third  of  the  cotton  crop  of  the  country  by  1821, 
and  a  few  years  later  over  two- thirds, 


238  NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 

From  1 8 10  to  1840  the  three  states  of  Alabama,  Mississippi,  and 
Louisiana,  which  in  1810  contained  116,000  inhabitants, nearly  doubled 
Growth  of  their  population  every  ten  years.  The  five  states  of 
population.  Ohio,  Indiana,  Illinois,  Michigan,  and  Wisconsin  in 
creased  in  population  from  50,000  in  1800  to  800,000  in  1820  and 


PICKING  COTTON,  NEAR  ATLANTA,  GA. 

3,000,000  in  1840.  In  the  single  decade  1800-1810,  Ohio,  Indiana, 
and  Illinois,  each  multiplied  its  population  by  five.  The  largest 
towns  in  the  West  in  1810,  all  situated  on  the  rivers,  were  New 
Orleans  with  24,000  inhabitants,  Pittsburg  with  6000,  Cincinnati  with 
2500,  and  St.  Louis  with  5000.  Buffalo,  Cleveland,  Detroit,  and 
Chicago,  on  the  lakes  farther  north,  were  still  small  villages.  In  the 
five  years,  1815-1820,  five  new  states  were  admitted  into  the  Union 
from  the  new  regions,  Mississippi  and  Alabama  in  the  Southwest, 
and  Indiana,  Illinois,  and  Missouri  in  the  Northwest.  Ohio  in  the 
Northwest  and  Louisiana  in  the  Southwest  had  been  admitted  in 
1803  and  1812  respective! v. 


THE   WAR  OF  1812 


239 


The  population  of  the  entire  Union  numbered  3,900,000  in  1790, 
5,000,000  in  1800,  7,000,000  in  1810,  and  9,000,000  in  1820.  Well 
might  Calhoun  exclaim  in  Congress,  "We  are  great  and  rapidly,  I 


CINCINNATI  IN  1810 


was  about  to  say,  fearfully,  growing.     This  is  our  pride  and  our  danger, 
our  weakness  and  our  strength." 


Made 
a 
State 

Population 

1790 

1800 

1810 

1820 

1830 

1840 

1850 

1910 

Vermont  
Kentucky  
Tennessee  
Ohio  
Louisiana  
Indiana  

1791 
1792 
1796 
1803 
1812 
1816 
1817 
1818 
1819 
1820 
1820 
1836 
1836 

1845 
!846 
1848 

85000 
73000 
35000 

96000 

154000 
22000O 
105000 
45000 

50OO 
8000 

150000 

2  I  7OOO 
406OOO 
260000 
230000 
76OOO 
28000 
40000 
I2OOO 

I9OOO 
228000 
4OOO 
IOOO 

235000 

564000 
420000 
580000 

153000 
147000 

75000 
55000 

127000 
66000 
298000 
9000 
14000 

280000 

680000 

681000 
937000 
215000 

343000 

136000 

157000 
309000 
140000 
400000 
31000 
30000 
34000 

291000 
780000 
830000 
1520000 
352000 
685000 

375000 

476000 

590000 
380000 
500000 

2I2OOO 

97000 

54000 
43000 
30000 

314000 

982000 

I  000000 

1980000 

517000 
988000 

606000 
850000 
771000 
680000 
580000 

397000 

209000 
87000 
192000 
305000 

355000 

2289000 
2184000 

4767000 

1656000 
2700000 
1797000 
5638000 
2138000 
3290000 
740000 
2810000 

1574000 
752000 
2224000 

2333000 

Mississippi  
Illinois  
Alabama  

Missouri  

Maine  . 

Michigan  
Arkansas  
Florida  
Iowa  
Wisconsin 

240  NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 

The  commercial  interaction  of  the  various  sections  of  the  country  on 
one  another  was  an  important  development  arising  out  of  the  improve- 
Theinde-  ment  in  transportation  and  the  rapid  westward  drift  of 
the  various*  P°Pulati°n-  Immense  prosperity  came  to  the  South 
sections  of  both  on  the  seaboard  and  in  the  Mississippi  Valley,  through 
the  Union.  the  cuitivation  of  cotton,  and  to  the  Northwest  from  a 
variety  of  products,  chiefly  corn,  wheat,  oats,  hogs,  sheep, 
and  cattle.  Devotion  to  a  single  product  rendered  the  South  dependent 
on  the  states  of  the  Northwest  for  food  products,  and  this  near  and 
easy  market  down  the  Mississippi  was  to  the  Northwest  at  this  time 
its  chief  source  of  profit.  The  Northeast  rejoiced  in  the  prosperity  of 
both  agricultural  sections,  as  growing  markets  for  its  manufactured 
goods,  and  in  turn  drew  from  'these  raw  material  and  food  supplies. 
The  prosperity  of  the  various  parts  of  the  country  was  mutual  and 
interdependent. 

The  Appalachian  barrier  on  the  way  to  the  interior  was  pierced  in 
several  places.  The  French  early  traversed  the  Great  Lakes,  and' 
Routes  to  crossing  at  various  portages,  floated  down  the  streams  and 
the  West.  rivers.  Young  George  Washington  and  General  Brad- 
dock  marched  overland  from  the  valley  of  the  Potomac  to  the  Valley 
of  the  Monongahela,  and  thence  to  the  Ohio  at  Pittsburg.  Sevier, 
Robertson,  and  Boone,  and  those  who  followed  them  to  Tennessee  and 
Kentucky,  passed  down  the  valleys  stretching  southwest  from  Penn 
sylvania,  and  over  the  mountains  at  Cumberland  Gap.  George 
Rogers  Clark  and  his  expedition  from  Virginia  took  the  old  route  of 
Washington  and  Braddock  to  the  Monongahela  and  Pittsburg,  and 
floated  down  the  Ohio  to  the  Mississippi  on  rafts.  The  Marietta  set 
tlers  from  New  England  made  their  way  over  the  mountains  from 
Philadelphia  to  Pittsburg.  All  these  routes  were  in  use  after  1800, 
and  all  of  them,  in  comparison  with  those  of  the  present  day,  were 
slow,  laborious,  and  dangerous. 

The  tribulations  of  frontier  travel,  which  afforded  the  strongest 
argument  in  favor  of  internal  improvements,  repeated  the  vexatious 
Frontier  experiences  of  colonial  days.  The  travelers  record  the 

travel.  dangers  of  the  bridges  and  ferries,  and  the  inconveniences 

of  the  inns.  The  following  extracts  from  the  diary  of  a  Connecticut 
girl  traveling  to  Ohio  in  1810  portray  these  conditions.  'What  is 
everybody's  business  is  nobody's'  — for  instance  it  is  nobody's  business 
where  we  are  going,  yet  everybody  inquires  —  every  toll  gatherer  and 
child  that  sees  us.  ...  They  come  in,  in  droves  young  and  old  - 
black  and  white  women  and  children.  .  .  .  Just  as  we  set  down  to 
tea,  in  came  a  dozen  or  two  of  women,  each  with  a  child  in  her  arms, 


THE   WAR  OF   1812 


241 


and  stood  around  the  room.  ...  I  concluded  that  they  came  to  see 
us  Yankees,  as  they  would  a  learned  pig.  .  .  .  The  bridge  over  it  [the 
Delaware]  is  elegant,  I  think — It  is  covered,  &  has  16  windows  each 
side.  .  .  .  It  is  amusing  to  see  the  variety  of  paintings  on  the  inn 
keeper's  signs  —  I  saw  one  in  N.  J.  with  Thos.  Jeff'n's  head  &  shoulders 
and  his  name  above  it  —  today  I  saw  General  G.  Washington  —  his 
name  underneath  —  General  Putnam  riding  down  the  steps  at  Horse- 


OVERLAND  TRAVEL 


neck  —  one  sign  was  merely  3  little  kegs  hanging  down  one  after  the 
other  —They  have  the  sun  rising,  &  at  Meridian,  here  a  full  moon,  a 
new  moon,  the  moon  &  7  stars  around  her,  the  Lion  and  Unicorn  'fight 
ing  &c.,'  &  everything  else  that  a  Dutchman  had  ever  seen  or  heard. 
.  .  .  We  are  obliged  to  sleep  every  &  any  way  at  most  of  the  inns 
now.  .  .  .  My  companions  were  disturbed  by  the  wagoners  who 
put  up  here  &  were  all  night  in  the  room  below  us,  eating,  drinking, 
talking  &  swearing.  ...  I  have  learned  to  eat  raw  pork  &  drink 
whiskey.  .  .  .  Don't  you  think  I  shall  do  for  a  new  country?  .  .  . 
We  saw  some  men  today  mending  the  roads.  ...  I  did  not  think  a 
Pennsylvanian  ever  touched  a  road  or  made  a  bridge  for  we  are 
obliged  to  ride  through  every  stream  we  come  to.  ...  We  have  been 
nearly  twenty  miles  today  &  I  have  been  obliged  to  walk  up  hill,  till  we 
are  all  very  tired.  .  .  .  From  what  I  have  seen  and  heard,  I  think 
the  State  of  Ohio  will  be  well  filled  up  before  winter.  .  .  .  Wagons  with 
out  number  every  day  go  on.  One  went  on  containing  forty  people.  — 


242  NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 

We  almost  every  day  see  them  with  18  or  20  —  one  stopped  here  to 
night  with  27.  .  .  .  We  are  over  the  6th  mountain  &  at  an  inn  at 
the  foot  of  it.  ...  This  mountain  is  called  worse  than  any  of  them  — 
it  is  only  6  miles  over.  We  have  only  come  8  today  &  I  have  not 
been  in  the  wagon.  The  horses  once  or  twice  got  set  &  cast  &c.  — we 
have  a  deal  of  bad  luck.  .  .  .  We  saw  a  very  large  rock  containing  a 
great  many  names  —  we  added  ours  to  the  number." 


TYPICAL  LOG  CABIN 

In  the  primeval  forest,  which  stretched  for  several  hundred  miles 
west  of  the  Alleghanies,  the  experiences  of  the  frontiersman  were 
The  new  essentially  the  same  as  those  of  the  early  settlers  in  the 

prairie  forests  nearer  the  Atlantic.     When  these  wooded  lands 

of  Ohio  and  Indiana  were  passed  and  in  Illinois  the 
eastern  limits  of  the  broad  interior  prairies  were  reached,  new  ex 
periences  were  in  store  for  settlers.  The  country  in  this  latter  section 
was  flat  and  in  large  measure  treeless,  and  newcomers  could  enter  at 
once  on  fine  lands  prepared  for  them  by  nature,  without  first  under 
going  the  arduous  labor  of  clearing,  which  had  been  bestowed  on  almost 
every  acre  between  Illinois  and  the  Atlantic.  Farming  and  grazing 
could  begin  at  once;  great  spreading  fields  of  grass,  untouched  by  the 
hands  of  civilized  man,  stood  ready,  inviting  flocks  and  herds  to  come 
and  partake  of  their  bounty. 

The  typical  cabin  of  the  frontiersman  was  built  of  logs.     There 


THE  WAR  OF  1812 


243 


were  hundreds  of  cabins  without  a  nail  or  a  particle  of  iron  about  them3 
with  the  cracks  between   the  rough  logs  "  chinked  and    The  log 
daubed"   with  mud.     A  few  pounds  of  nails,  a  dozen    cabin- 
panes  of  glass,  were  among  the  comforts  of  life.     If  a  saw-mill  was  near 
at  hand,  to  save  the  labor  of  splitting  slabs  for  doors  and  floors,  the 
settler  was  lucky.     In  addition  to  the  cabin  there  was  needed  a  meat 
house,  a  corn  crib,  and  stables,  all  built  of  rough  logs.     If  no  good 
spring  of  water  was  at  hand,  a  well  had  to  be  dug,  the  labor  usually  of 
four  or  five  days. 


MAIL  CARRIER  ABOUT  1800 

Except  in  the  timbered  tracts,  where  in  the  prairie  it  was  wretched 
policy  to  settle,  the  comparatively  easy  process  of  grubbing  super 
seded  clearing  and  girdling.  In  preparation  for  plowing,  Grubbing, 
the  farmer,  with  a  mattock,  had  to  grub  out  the  sprouts,  plowing,  and 
roots,  and  stumps  of  all  small  growth.  An  acre  could  be 
grubbed  in  from  three  to  six  days.  To  turn  over  the  prairie  sward 
required  a  strong  team  and  a  large  sharp  plow.  To  split  the  rails 
necessary  for  fencing  was  an  enormous  task.  J.  M.  Peck,  in  "A 
Guide  to  Immigrants,"  published  in  1831,  estimated  the  expenses  of 
a  farm  of  160  acres,  divided  into  four  fields  surrounded  by  a  high 
fence  eight  rails  high  and  staked,  allowing  two  stakes  to  each  panel 
of  fence  and  two  division  fences  crossing  each  other  at  right  angles,  as 
follows:  to  inclose  and  divide  the  farm  into  four  fields  would  require 
15,360  rails  and  3840  stakes,  the  rails  ten,  and  the  stakes  eight  feet 
in  length.  The  cost  of  rails  was  50  cents  per  hundred,  of  stakes  37 \ 
cents  per  hundred, -which,  with  the  cost  of  hauling  and  laying,  together 
with  a  few  extras,  brought  the  expense  of  fencing  up  to  $160.  Adding 
the  cost  of  breaking  up  160  acres  of  prairie  at  $2  per  acre,  the  cost  of 


244  NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 

all  buildings,  and  the  cost  of  land  at  $2  per  acre  before  1820  and  $1.25 
per  acre  after  that  date,  the  total  expense  of  the  prairie  farm  of  one 
hundred  and  sixty  acres  approximated  one  thousand  dollars. 

Actual  expenditures  on  the  prairie  were  generally  far  less.  The 
energetic  brought  their  own  horses,  wagons,  and  plows,  broke  up  their 
The  ener-  ^an<^  themselves,  and  by  their  own  efforts  built  their 
getic  and  cabins,  split  their  rails,  fenced  their  fields,  and  culti- 
iss*  vated  their  crops.  Peck  cites  the  record  of  two  typical 
settlers.  "J.  S./'  from  near  Zanesville,  Ohio,  was  of  the  energetic 
class,  and  in  the  first  year  raised  in  Illinois  a  crop  of  corn,  forty  bushels 
to  the  acre.  "P.  Q."  from  Tennessee  arrived  at  about  the  same  time, 
but  instead  of  giving  himself  to  hard  work,  spent  his  time  in  hunting, 
lounging  at  the  grocery  store,  and  getting  in  but  a  small  quantity  of 
wood  and  meal.  He  took  an  old  cabin  that  was  open  and  exposed 
to  the  weather,  and  would  not  " chink  and  daub"  it,  as  he  intended  to 
"move  on."  His  large  family  fell  sick  through  exposure,  and  the 
children  were  not  sent  to  school.  In  the  spring  "P.  Q."  rented  land 
and  raised  a  sorry  crop,  which  he' sold  in  the  field,  and  then  "moved 
on,"  to  pursue  the  same  course  over  again  in  the  next  county.  Added 
Peck,  "Where  one  man  breaks  up  and  fences  one  hundred  acres  in  a 
season,  about  fifty  take  the  track  of  'P.  Q.'  ' 

GENERAL  REFERENCES 

H.  ADAMS,  United  States,  V-IX;  McM ASTER,  United  States,  IV;  K.  C.  BABCOCK, 
American  Nationality;  TURNER,  New  V/est;  HARDING,  Orations,  172-190. 

SPECIAL  TOPICS 

1.  PERRY'S  VICTORY.     Journal  of  American  History,  VIII,  I;  Epochs,  V,  28-36; 
H.  ADAMS,  United  States,  VII,  115-127. 

2.  CONSTITUTION  and  GUERRIERE.     C.  F.  ADAMS,  Wednesday,  August  19,  1812, 
6.30  p.m.  —  The  Birth  of  a  World  Power,  American  Historical  Review,  XVIII,  513-521; 
Epochs,  V,  11-20;  H.  ADAMS,  United  States,  VI,  370-37?- 

3.  THE  HARTFORD  CONVENTION.     H.  ADAMS,  United  States,  VIII,  287-310;  MAC- 
DONALD,  Select  Documents,  1776-1861,  198-207;  Epochs,  96-101;  H.  V.  AMES,  State 
Documents,  77-88. 

4.  THE  COTTON  GIN.     Epochs,  IV,  70-82;  E.  C.  BROOKS,  Story  of  the  Cotton  Gin, 
89-99. 

5.  THE  STEAMBOAT.    A.  R.  WALLACE,  Wonderful  Century,  i-n;  Epochs,  IV,  186- 
196  and  VI,  17-19;  McM'ASTER,  United  States,  III,  486-494;  and  IV,  397-402;  Old 
South  Leaflets,  V,  108;  A.  C.  SUTCLIFFE,  Robert  Fulton,  and  The  Clermont;  D.  L.  BUCK- 
MAN,  Old  Steamboat  Days  on  the  Hudson;  C.  S.  BULLOCK,  The  Miracle  of  the  First 
Steamboat,  Journal  of  American  History,  I,  33-48,  also  I,  395-432;  DUNBAR,  Travel  in 
America,  I,  232-264,  and  II,  357-414. 

6.  THE  WESTERN  FRONTIER.  J.  M.  PECK,  Guide  for  Immigrants;  R.  R.  WILSON, 
Burnaby's  Travels;  THWAITES,  Ed.,  Early  Western  Travels;  SPARKS,  ED.,  English  Settle- 


THE  WAR  OF  1812  245 

ment  in  the  Illinois;  J.  E.  KIRKPATRICK,  Timothy  Flint;  M.  FARRAND,  ED.,  Journey  to 
Ohio,  by  M.  V.  H.  DWIGHT;  Contemporaries,  III,  459-478;  H.  M.  CHITTENDEN,  Ameri 
can  Fur  Trade;  Epochs,  V,  154-157,  and  VI,  130-135;  GRINNELL,  Trails,  330-358; 
SPARKS,  Expansion,  238-248. 

ILLUSTRATIVE  MATERIAL 

F.  S.  KEY,  Star  Spangled  Banner;  HOLMES,  Old  Ironsides;  I.  BACHELLER,  D'ri 
and  I;  COOPER,  The  Prairie;  D.  G.  MITCHELL,  Doctor  Johns. 

SUGGESTIVE  QUESTIONS 

Was  Jefferson  right  in  refusing  to  go  to  war  to  vindicate  the  rights  of  neutrals  on  the 
sea?  In  what  respects  were  the  principles  of  Jeffersonian  democracy  injurious  to  the 
United  States?  What  were  the  decisive  military  campaigns  in  the  war,  1812-1815,  and 
why?  Was  the  capture  of  Washington  by  the  British  an  important  event  in  the 
conduct  of  the  war?  How  do  you  explain  the  failure  of  the  attempts  of  the  United 
States  to  invade  Canada?  Explain  the  sectionalism  of  the  war,  1812-1815.  Why 
did  the  war  ultimately  increase  the  feeling  of  nationalism?  In  what  ways  did  the 
industrial  revolution  in  the  United  States  derive  advantage  from  conditions  in  Great 
Britain?  Which  section  of  the  United  States  gained  most  from  the  results  of  the  war? 
What  were  the  leading  issues  in  current  politics  before  the  people  in  the  presidential 
campaign  of  1812? 


CHAPTER  XVIII 
REACTION   AGAINST   NATIONALISM 

AN  ERA  OF  GOOD   FEELING,   1817-1821 

THERE  was  hardly  a  contest  worthy  of  the  name  over  the  presidency 
of  1816.  The  Democratic-Republicans,  now  sometimes  referred  to  as 
The  presi-  National  Republicans  from  their  championship  of  broad 
dential  elec-  national  measures,  nominated  as  their  candidate  the 
Secretary  of  State,  James  Monroe.  The  vanishing 
Federalists  made  no  formal  nomination,  but  they  carried  three  states, 
Massachusetts,  Connecticut,  and  Delaware,  and  cast  their  vote  for 
Rufus  King  of  New  York,  who  had  twice  been  their  candidate  for 
Vice  President.  Monroe  carried  all  the  other  states  and  received 
183  votes  in  the  electoral  colleges  to  34  for  King. 

James  Monroe  was  the  fourth  in  the  distinguished  Virginia  line  of 
presidents,  and  his  election  fairly  entitled  that  state  to  her  reputation 
James  as  "The  Mother  of  Presidents."  He  had  served  as  min- 

Monroe.  ister   to   France   under  Washington,   minister   to   Great 

Britain  under  Jefferson,  and  Secretary  of  State  under  Madison. 

Associated  with  Monroe  in  his  cabinet  were  three  especially  strong 
men,  John  Quincy  Adams,  Secretary  of  State,  John  C.  Calhoun,  Sec- 
President  retary  of  War,  and  William  H.  Crawford,  Secretary  of 
Monroe's  the  Treasury.  Adams,  the  son  of  ex-President  John 
Adams,  had  been  trained  for  public  life  from  his  youth. 
As  a  boy  he  accompanied  his  father,  who  was  sent  to  Paris  on  a 
diplomatic  mission,  and  later  he  himself  represented  his  country  at 
several  different  European  courts,  crowning  his  diplomatic  career  by 
serving  as  one  of  the  commissioners,  along  with  Henry  Clay,  Albert 
Gallatin  and  two  others,  in  the  negotiation  of  the  treaty  of  peace  with 
Great  Britain  in  1814.  Calhoun  owed  his  position  to  his  record  in  the 
House  of  Representatives,  where  he  attracted  attention  by  his  display 
of  vigorous  intellectual  powers  and  his  enthusiastic  support  of  broad 
national  measures.  Crawford's  services  in  national  politics  had  been 
rendered  as  Senator  from  Georgia  and  as  minister  to  France.  In  the 
Department  of  the  Treasury  he  won  the  praise  of  no  less  an  authority 
than  Albert  Gallatin. 

246 


REACTION  AGAINST  NATIONALISM  247 

Three  new   members  of   Congress,  who  were  destined  to  future 
greatness,  were  Daniel  Webster  of  Massachusetts,  as  intellectual  as 
Calhoun  and  as  eloquent  as  Clay;   Rufus  King,  an  old    other 
Federalist  leader,  famous  for  his  anti-slavery  sentiments;    leaders- 
and  Thomas  H.  Benton  of  Missouri,  ardent  in  his  devotion  to  western 
interests.     Ex-Secretary  Albert   Gallatin,    and  ex-Presidents  Adams, 
Jefferson,  and  Madison  maintained  their  interest  in  public  affairs  and 
were  valued  counselors. 

With  the  Federalist  party  virtually  out  of  existence,  so  that  partisan 
strife  on  national  questions  was  quiescent,  President  Monroe  happily 
declared  to  the  people  that  they  were  living  in  an  "era  of    The  «era  of 
good  feeling."    Following  the  example  of  Washington,  who    good    ^ 
had  aroused  public  enthusiasm  by  long  trips  through  the 
different  sections  of  the  country,  Monroe  traveled  thousands  of  miles 
in  New  England,  the  West,  and  the  South,  and  mingled  with  all  classes 
of  the  people.     Unlike  Washington,  who  courteously  accepted  the  love 
and  devotion  of  the  people  but  made  no  speeches,  Monroe  invariably 
addressed  the  crowds  which  assembled  to  greet  him. 

Foreign  affairs  of  importance  engaged  the  nation's  attention  and 
evoked  a  unanimity  of  sentiment  that  added  to  the  internal  harmony. 
Florida,  which  was  still  in  the  possession  of  Spain,  was  Trouble 
the  home  of  wandering  tribes  of  Seminole  Indians,  with  Spanish 
During  the  second  war  with  Great  Britain  they  caused 
trouble  for  the  United  States  by  crossing  the  border  and  harassing  the 
settlers  of  the  United  States.  They  continued  their  depredations 
after  the  close  of  the  war  and  did  not  cease  until  Andrew  Jackson  was 
sent  against  them  in  1818.  He  pursued  them  into  their  own  swamps 
and  in  three  months  had  them  completely  routed.  Such  hostile 
operations  on  the  soil  of  a  foreign  state  were  justified  on  the  accepted 
principle  of  international  law  that  one  nation  may  invade  the  territory 
of  another  for  the  purpose  of  abating  a  nuisance.  When  Spain,  highly 
incensed,  demanded  redress  for  Jackson's  acts,  Monroe  boldly  assumed 
responsibility  for  them  and  made  the  counter-demand  on  Spain  that  she 
either  keep  order  in  Florida  or  sell  the  peninsula  to  the  United  States. 

Spain  became  convinced  that  she  had  better  dispose  of  her  colony 
on  such  t^rms  as  she  could  secure,  rather  than  run  the  risk  of  losing  it 
and  receiving  nothing  in  return.  Accordingly,  in  1819,  The  purchase 
she  ceded  Florida,  to  the  United  States.  The  two  na-  of  Florida, 
tions  reciprocally  renounced  all  claims  for  damages  or  injuries  which 
they  had  suffered  at  the  hands  of  one  another,  and  in  addition  the 
United  States  agreed  to  pay  the  claims  of  their  citizens  against  Spain  to 
an  amount  not  exceeding  $5,000,000.  The  United  States  gave  up  her 

17 


248  NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 

claims  to  the  Spanish  colony  of  Texas,  which  seemed  doubtful  at  the 
time  but  have  recently  been  discovered  to  have  been  well  grounded 
by  the  terms  of  the  purchase  of  Louisiana,  in  which  territory  Texas 
should  rightfully  have  been  included,  according  to  old  French  docu 
ments.  Spain  at  the  same  time  made  the  concession  of  giving  up  to 
the  United  States  all  claims  to  East  and  West  Florida,  east  of  the 
Mississippi,  and  west  of  the  Mississippi  all  rights  to  territory  north 
and  east  of  a  line  running  in  general  northwest  through  the  courses 
of  the  Sabine,  Red,  and  Arkansas  Rivers,  and  thence  west  on  the 
forty- second  parallel  to  the  Pacific.  This  strengthened  the  hold  of 
the  United  States  on  the  Oregon  country  in  the  Northwest,  where 
Spain  had  a  shadowy  claim.  The  nation  generally  acquiesced  in  this 
third  territorial  acquisition,  as  she  did  in  the  fiist  in  1783,  whereas 
all  the  other  territorial  acquisitions  in  her  history  have  encountered 
opposition.  Although  Florida,  with  an  area  of  only  65,000  square 
miles,  was  not  as  large  or  as  rich  as  the  Louisiana  Purchase  or  as 
the  country  west  of  the  Alleghanies  ceded  by  Great  Britain  in  1783, 
it  was  of  great  strategical  importance.  With  Florida  in  her  possession 
the  United  States  could  more  easily  guard  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  the  key 
to  the  Mississippi  River  and  the  interior  of  the  continent,  from  possible 
foreign  invasion,  and  more  easily  avert  attack  through  Florida  herself. 

The  constitutionality  of  annexing  foreign  territory,  which  had  been 
left  an  unsettled  question  after  the  acquisition  of  Louisiana,  was 
The  consti-  authoritatively  affirmed  by  the  Supreme  Court  in  1828. 
tutionaiity  gaid  the  Court:  "The  Constitution  confers  absolutely  on 
foreign*13  the  government  of  the  Union  the  powers  of  making  war 
territory.  an(j  of  making  treaties;  consequently,  that  government 
possesses  the  power  of  acquiring  territory,  either  by  conquest  or  by 
treaty." 

While  the  Florida  question  was  still  pending  and  even  earlier,  the 
problem  of  recognizing  the  independence  of  the  Spanish  and  Portuguese 
Reco  nition  colonies  in  Central  and  South  America  had  come  up.  When 
of  the  inde-  Napoleon  Bonaparte,  Emperor  of  the  French,  invaded 
the  SouCth°f  the  Kingdom  of  Spain  in  1808,  deposed  the  Spanish  sov- 
American  ereigns,  and  placed  his  own  brother,  Joseph,  on  the  throne, 
the  Spanish  American  colonies  rejected  the  yoke  of  the 
new  monarch  and  rose  in  rebellion  under  the  leadership  of  Simon  Bolivar 
in  Colombia,  San  Martin  in  Argentine  and  Chile,  and  other  patriots. 
The  interest  of  the  people  of  the  United  States  in  the  struggle  was 
both  commercial  and  sentimental.  The  independence  of  the  Spanish 
colonies  would  almost  certainly  mean  a  chance  for  outsiders  to 
trade  in  the  South  American  and  Central  American  markets,  from 


REACTION  AGAINST  NATIONALISM  249 

which  they  had  been  excluded  for  centuries  by  the  narrow  Spanish 
colonial  system.  Before  such  magnificent  opportunities,  which  were 
almost  unlimited  in  their  possibilities,  the  trade  of  the  British  West 
Indies,  once  eagerly  sought  by  the  merchants  of  the  United  States, 
faded  into  insignificance.  Moreover,  the  liberty-loving  citizens  of 
the  United  States,  the  first  American  republic  to  free  itself  from  Euro 
pean  control,  felt  a  peculiar  sympathy  for  the  Spanish-American 
patriots  fighting  to  make  good  their  own  independence.  The  people  of 
the  United  States  were  almost  a  unit  in  favor  of  recognizing  the  inde 
pendence  of  the  revolting  colonies  and  tendering  them  their  moral  sup 
port.  Although  the  treaty  with  Spain  for  the  cession  of  Florida  was 
concluded  February  22,  1819,  the  shrewd  Spanish  monarch  delayed  the 
exchange  of  ratifications  till  February  22,  1821,  and  in  this  interval  of 
two  years  President  Monroe  refused  the  helping  hand  to  the  rebels  in 
arms  against  Spain,  lest  such  a  step  antagonize  Spain  and  block  nego 
tiations  for  the  annexation  of  Florida.  The  conclusion  of  the  Florida 
treaty  left  the  United  States  free  to  act,  and  she  recognized  the  inde 
pendence  of  all  Spain's  American  colonies  excepting  Cuba  and  Porto 
Rico,  and  that  of  Portuguese  Brazil,  in  1822. 

The  interests  of  Great  Britain  coincided  with  those  of  the  United 
States.  Outside  of  Great  Britain,  however,  forces  were  at  work  in 
Europe  which  threatened  to  restore  Spain's  tottering  The  genesis 
American  empire.  When,  in  1820,  Spain  was  prepar-  of  the  Mon- 
ing  an  expedition  to  save  her  colonies,  back  of  her  stood 
Russia,  Austria,  and  Prussia,  in  the  Holy  Alliance,  formed  in 
1815,  to  forward  the  government  of  this  world  by  "the  precepts  of 
Justice,  Christian  Charity,  and  Peace."  The  pious  profession  was  a 
cloak  for  the  furtherance  of  the  interests  of  absolute  monarchy  against 
"the  curse  of  revolution."  A  democratic  uprising  in  Spain  herself 
was  put  down  with  the  support  of  the  Alliance,  and  under  the  leader 
ship  of  the  same  Alliance  the  powers  of  Europe  assembled  in  congress 
at  Verona  in  1822,  to  discuss  their  common  interests  and  those  of  Spain 
in  particular.  Russia,  Austria,  Prussia,  France  and  Spain  favored  a 
combined  armed  expedition  against  the  South  American  insurgents. 
Great  Britain  alone  of  the  European  nations  held  out  against  the  step. 

Through  her  foreign  secretary  the  latter  power  proposed  to  President 
Monroe  that  Britain  and  the  United  States  act  together  to 
protect  South  America;  but  Monroe  preferred  to  meet    two*.    JXo 
the  situation  alone,  and  in  his  annual  message  of   1823    terfef ence  in 
announced  to  the  world  the  position  of  the  United  States    the  politics 
in  regard  to  South  America.     "We  owe  it,  therefore,  to    of  Amenca- 
candor  and  to   the  amicable  relations  existing  between   the  United 


250  NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 

States  and  those  powers  to  declare,"  he  said,  "that  we  should  con 
sider  any  attempt  on  their  part  to  extend  their  system  to  any  portion 
of  the  hemisphere  as  dangerous  to  our  peace  and  safety.  With  the 
existing  colonies  or  dependencies  of  any  European  power  we  have  not 
interfered  and  shall  not  interfere.  But  with  the  governments  who  have 
declared  their  independence  and  maintained  it,  and  whose  independence 
we  have  on  great  consideration  and  on  just  principles,  acknowledged, 
we  could  not  view  any  interposition  for  the  purpose  of  oppressing 
them  or  controlling  in  any  other  manner  their  destiny  by  any  Euro 
pean  power  in  any  other  light  than  as  the  manifestation  of  an 
unfriendly  disposition  toward  the  United  States."  With  this  inde 
pendent  stand  the  British  found  themselves  quite  out  of  sympathy. 

There  was  also  in  President  Monroe's  message  a  warning  to  Russia, 
which  by  a  decree  of  1821  was  attempting  to  extend  its  power  on  the 
No  territorial  Pacific  coast  south  from  Alaska  as  far  as  the  fifty-first 
acquisition  parallel,  over  a  part  of  the  Oregon  territory  already  claimed 
by  foreign  by  both  Great  Britain  and  the  United  States.  The 
powers.  President  judged  the  occasion  "proper  for  asserting,  as  a 

principle  in  which  the  rights  and  interests  of  the  United  States  are 
involved,  that  the  American  continents,  by  the  free  and  independent 
condition  which  they  have  assumed  and  maintain,  are  henceforth  not 
to  be  considered  as  subjects  for  future  colonization  by  any  European 
powers." 

This  so-called  Monroe  Doctrine,  which,  it  must  be  remembered,  was 
an  utterance  of  the  President  and  not  a  law  of  Congress,  contained,  there 
fore,  three  principles.     First,  the  United  States  would  not 
Immediate         .        '  .      ^  ~   .  „ 

results  of          interfere  in  European  affairs;  second,  European  nations 

Doctrine™6  must  not  interfere  with  the  existing  governments  in 
America;  and  third,  European  nations  must  set  up  no 
more  new  colonies  in  America.  One  immediate  result  of  the  firm 
stand  of  the  United  States  was  that  Spain  did  not  recover  her  revolted 
colonies;  and  another  was  a  treaty  between  the  United  States  and 
Russia,  concluded  in  1824,  by  which  the  southern  boundary  of  Alaska 
was  placed  at  54°  40'  north  latitude. 

THE  END  OF  THE  ERA  OF  GOOD  FEELING 

Increasing  sectionalism  and  increasing  personal  and  party  strife, 
as  year  by  year  the  nationalizing  influences  of  the  War  of  1812  receded 
Increasing  into  the  past,  furnish  the  key  to  the  history  of  the  country 
sectionalism,  during  the  second  administration  of  President  Monroe  and 
that  of  President  John  Quincy  Adams  which  followed.  The  happy 
"era  of  good  feeling"  of  Monroe's  first  term  was  but  temporary. 


REACTION  AGAINST  NATIONALISM 


251 


The  presidential  contests  of  1820  and  1824  afford  a  striking  indica 
tion  of  the  changing  spirit  of  the  times.     Apparently  all  was  harmony 
when  Monroe  was  reflected  in  1820.     There  was  but  one    The  presi_ 
party  and  one  candidate.     President  Monroe  missed  a 
unanimous   election  in  the  electoral  colleges  by  a  single 
vote,  which  was  cast  for  John  Quincy  Adams,  the  Secretary  of  State, 

because  one  elector  felt  that  the 
honor  of  a  unanimous  election  to 
the  first  office  in  the  land  should 
belong  to  none  but  George  Wash 
ington. 

To   this  spiritless  election  the 
bitter  struggle  over  the  presidency 
in  1824,  with  five  can-    The  presi_ 
didates  of  the  Demo-    dential  con- 

,.     „  test  of  1824. 

cratic-Republican  or 
National-Republican  party  vying 
with  one  another  for  the  office, 
furnishes  an  instructive  contrast. 
Storms  had  been  brewing  during 
the  apparent  calm.  The  contest 
ants  in  the  five-cornered  race  were 
Adams,  Calhoun,  and  Crawford 
from  the  cabinet  of  the  retiring 
President,  Henry  Clay,  Speaker  of 
the  House  of  Representatives,  and 
Andrew  Jackson,  the  country's 
greatest  military  leader.  Crawford  was  the  nominee  of  the  congres 
sional  caucus  of  the  party,  while  the  others  were  nominated  by  state 
legislatures  and  local  state  conventions.  Jackson  was  the  choice  of 
the  largest  number  of  voters  on  election  day,  but  neither  he  nor  any  of 
his  rivals  received  the  requisite  majority  of  votes  in  the  electoral  col 
leges,  and  in  accordance  with  the  provisions  of  the  Constitution  the 
ultimate  choice  fell  to  the  House  of  Representatives,  which  awarded 
the  office  to  Adams.  Clay,  as  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Representatives, 
wielded  a  strong  influence  over  his  fellow-members,  and  when  the  new 
President  made  him  Secretary  of  State,  Jackson  and  his  followers,  with 
the  cry  of  "bargain  and  corruption,"  charged  that  Adams  had  promised 
the  secretaryship  to  Clay  to  secure  the  latter's  support  in  the  contest 
in  the  House  of  Representatives.  The  charges  have  since  been  effec 
tually  disproved,  but  at  that  day  they  were  believed  by  thousands  and 
exercised  an  influence  that  seriously  injured  the  political  fortunes  of 


JOHN  QUINCY  ADAMS 


252  NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 

both  Adams  and  Clay  to  the  end  of  their  careers.  Calhoun,  who  had 
fallen  out  of  the  presidential  race  before  election  day,  was  elected  Vice 
President  without  a  contest. 

The  subjects  provoking  political  strife  in  the  troubled  period 
that  followed  the  era  of  good  feeling  were  many  in  number,  the  most 

fruitful  being  that  of  slavery,  which  roused  a  tremendous 
tionai  ques-  clash  of  factions  near  the  close  of  Monroe's  first  adminis- 
tion  of  slav-  tration.  The  North  in  general  was  for  freedom,  the  South 

in  general  for  slavery  because  of  the  growing  profits  of  slave 
labor  in  the  cotton  fields;  but  this  divergence  of  interests  did  not  pro 
duce  a  cleavage  in  politics  till  the  two  sections  came  into  collision  over 
the  admission  of  the  territory  of  Missouri  into  the  Union  as  a  state. 
As  we  have  already  seen,  slavery  had  existed  in  America  from  the 
days  of  Columbus,  first  the  slavery  of  the  native  Indians,  and  then 
Th  b  "n  ^at  °^  ^e  Blacks  °f  Africa,  introduced  in  1502.  As  early 
ning  of  slav-  as  1526  black  slaves  toiled  with  d'Ayllon  in  his  fruitless 
America  attempt  to  found  a  settlement  in  Virginia.  After  the 

English  set  up  a  permanent  colony  on  this  same  coast 
almost  a  century  later,  a  Dutch  trading  ship  brought  the  first  negro 
slaves  to  the  settlement  at  Jamestown  in  1619. 

Negro  slavery  exercised  a  strong  sway  over  the  British  colonies. 
In  the  rice  swamps  of  the  Carolinas,  and  in  the  sugar  and  tobacco 
Slavery  in  plantations  both  of  the  mainland  and  of  the  West  Indies, 
colonial  the  slaves  performed  services  of  immense  economic  value; 

in  the  North,  where  the  unyielding  soil  required  more 
careful  and  intelligent  cultivation,  they  were  less  useful.  Under 
the  charter  of  the  British  King  the  Royal  African  Company,  many  of 
the  members  of  which  were  prominent  in  the  social  and  political  life 
of  Great  Britain,  carried  on  a  hugely  profitable  trade  transporting  the 
African  blacks  to  America.  It  has  been  estimated  that  at  the  begin 
ning  of  the  eighteenth  century  British  vessels  brought  25,000  slaves 
annually  to  the  British  colonies  in  America,  and  that  the  number  im 
ported  in  the  single  year  1771  reached  47,000. 

When  the  colonies  endeavored  to  put  a  stop  to  this  traffic,  their  laws 
taxing  the  trade  and  even  in  some  cases  actually  prohibiting  it, 
Efforts  to  encountered  the  royal  veto.  The  First  Continental  Con- 
abolish  gress  in  1774  resolved:  "We  will  neither  import  nor 

purchase  any  slave  imported  after  the  first  of  December 
next;  after  which  time  we  will  wholly  discontinue  the  slave  trade." 
The  Second  Continental  Congress  two  years  later  voted  that  ho  slave 
"be  imported  into  any  of  the  thirteen  colonies."  This  was  the  high- 
water  mark  of  colonial  anti-slavery. 


REACTION  AGAINST  NATIONALISM  253 

The  Declaration  of  Independence  adopted  three  months  later 
ignored  the  subject.  In  his  collected  writings  Thomas  Jefferson 

tells  how  in  the  original  draft  of  the  Declaration  he  had 

.      ,r.        .  .  ,     Slavery  and 

inserted  a  clause  condemning  the  King  for  wagmg     cruel    the  Deciara- 

war  against  human  nature  itself,  violating  its  most  sacred 
rights  of  life  and  liberty  in  the  persons  of  a  distant  people 
who  never  offended  him,  captivating  them  and  carrying  them  into 
slavery  in  another  hemisphere,  or  to  incur  miserable  death  in  their 
transportation  thither.  .  .  .  Determined  to  keep  open  a  market  where 
MEN  should  be  bought  and  sold,  he  has  prostituted  his  negative  for 
suppressing  every  legislative  attempt  to  prohibit  or  to  restrain  this 
execrable  commerce."  This  clause  was  struck  out  "in  complaisance 
to  South  Carolina  and  Georgia,  who  had  never  attempted  to  restrain 
the  importation  of  slaves,  and  who,  on  the  contrary,  still  wished 
to  continue  it.  Our  northern  brethren,  also,  I  believe,  felt  a  little 
tender  under  those  censures;  for  though  their  people  had  very  few 
slaves  themselves,  yet  they  had  been  pretty  considerable  carriers 
of  them  to  others." 

In  the  enthusiasm  for  human  rights  and  liberty  which  attended  and 
followed  the  Revolution,  the  Northern  States  stopped  the  importation 
of  slaves  and  gradually  went  to  the  length  of  freeing  the  The  emanci- 

slaves  within   their  borders.     Many  Southerners  would    pation  move- 
..  ,  ,      ,  ,.        .        ,     .  111  ment  follow- 

have  adopted  the  same  policy  in  their  states,  could  they    mg  the 
have  carried  the  majority  with  them.     Jefferson  labored    Revoluti<>n- 
to   induce   his    native   state    to  purchase  all  the  slaves  in  Virginia 
and  to  colonize  and  educate  them  outside  the  nation  at  the  state's 
expense.     He  failed  in   this  effort,  but,  nothing  daunted,  proposed 
a  plan   to   the  Congress   of   the  Confederation   in    1784   to   exclude 
slavery  from  all  the  public  lands  west  of  the  Appalachians.    This  was 
defeated  by  a  narrow  margin,  but  in  1787  the  plan  was  applied  by  the 
same  Congress,  in  the  celebrated  Ordinance  of  that  year,  to  that  part 
of  the  western  domain  lying  northwest  of  the  Ohio  River. 

The  constitutional  convention,  which  was  in  session  in  Philadelphia 
when  the  Congress  of  the  Confederation  passed  the  vote  against 
slavery  in  the  Northwest  Territory,  discussed  the  sub-  slavery  in 

iect  of  slavery,  but  did  not  see  fit  to  recognize  the  svstem    the.  consti- 
, .         ,  -      *  ,  tutional  con- 

directly.      In  tact,  the  words  slave  and  slavery  do  not    ventionof 

appear    in    the  Constitution.     Indirectly,  however,   the    1787- 
document  recognized  slavery  in  several  ways.     The  merely  negative 
act  of  separating  the  jurisdiction  of  the  states  and  the  nation  led  to 
important  results  in  this  connection.    On  the  ground  that  powers  not 
delegated  to  the  national  government  by  the  Constitution  nor  for- 


254  NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 

bidden  by  it  to  the  states,  were  reserved  to  the  states,  it  was  a  well- 
respected  principle  of  politics  down  to  1862  that  the  government  of 
the  United  States  could  not  touch  slavery  in  the  states.  In  further 
recognition  of  the  institution,  the  constitutional  convention  made  the 
decision  that  three-fifths  of  all  slaves  should  be  counted  as  population 
in  determining  the  size  of  a  state's  representation  in  the  House  of 
Representatives  and  its  share  in  direct  taxes  imposed  by  the  general 
government;  and  it  put  off  till  1808  the  date  when  Congress  might 
prohibit  the  foreign  slave  trade;  but  in  each  case  a  circumlocution 
was  resorted  to  in  order  to  avoid  the  actual  use  of  the  term  slave. 
A  national  law  prohibiting  the  importation  of  slaves  went  into 
effect  at  the  earliest  possible  date,  January  i,  1808,  the  same  day  that 
Great  Britain's  ban  on  the  trade  went  into  effect 

The  American  Colonization  Society  was  formed  in  1816  to  take 
freed  slaves  out  of  the  country  to  a  colony  prepared  for  them  in  Africa, 
The  coloni-  ^ater  recognized  as  the  independent  republic  of  Liberia, 
zation  Henry  Clay  was  at  one  time  president  of  this  society,  and 

many  eminent  men  were  included  in  the  list  of  its  mem 
bers,  but  the  scheme  of  colonization  of  the  blacks  never  proved  a 
success.  There  were  emancipation  societies,  too,  in  these  early  days 
of  the  nineteenth  century  both  in  the  Southern  States  and  in  the  states 
of  the  North. 

By  the  time  Missouri  was  applying  for  admission  to  the  Union  as  a 
slave  state,  slavery,  largely  through  the  influence  of  the  cotton  gin, 
The  change  had  become  so  important  commercially  that  it  was  begin- 

of  sentiment     ning  to  effect  a  change  of  sentiment  in  the  South.'     Philo- 

m  the  South  y  •      T 

against  eman-    sophical   and   moral    arguments   for   emancipation    were 

cipation.  giving  way  before   the   demonstrated   profitableness    of 

slavery.  The  Southern  States  were  falling  to  the  defense  of  the  sys 
tem  as  a  necessary  evil  and  even  as  a  positive  good. 

The  debate  over  the  admission  of  Missouri  waxed  hot  between  the 
sections.  Up  to  this  time  nine  states  had  been  admitted  into  the 
The  debate  Union  with  little  or  no  debate  on  the  subject  of  slavery, 

over  the  some  free  and  some  slave,  as  the  case  might  be,  till  there 

admission  of 

Missouri  into  was  an  even  balance  between  the  free  and  the  slave 
the  Union.  states,  eleven  on  each  side.  A  single  new  state  would 
disturb  the  balance  one  way  or  the  other.  The  pro-slavery  element 
rested  their  argument  in  favor  of  making  a  slave  state  out  of  Mis 
souri,  on  the  treaty  with  France  by  which  the  Louisiana  territory  was 
annexed.  This  guaranteed  to  the  people  of  the  whole  Louisiana  coun 
try  the  "free  enjoyment  of  their  liberty,  property,  and  the  religion 
which  they  profess."  Slaves,  in  their  view,  came  under  the  head  of 


REACTION  AGAINST  NATIONALISM  255 

property,  and  consequently  the  people  of  the  territory  of  Missouri, 
carved  out  of  Louisiana,  must  by  the  terms  of  the  treaty  be  allowed 
to  retain  their  slaves,  and  bring  them  with  them  when  they  were 
admitted  into  the  Union.  The  opponents  of  slavery,  on  the  other 
hand,  took  the  position  that  slaves  were  not  property  but  human 
beings,  ownership  in  whom  no  treaty  could  guarantee.  They  foresaw 
that  to  allow  Missouri  to  come  into  the  Union  as  a  slave  state  would 
set  a  precedent  that  might  fasten  slavery. on  any  state  later  carved 
out  of  the  Louisiana  territory.  The  Northerners  affirmed  that  Con 
gress  had  the  power  to  lay  down  conditions,  for  example  the  giving 
of  freedom  to  blacks,  which  territories  seeking  statehood  must  meet 
before  entering  the  Union.  This  power  of  Congress  the  Southerners 
stoutly  denied. 

To  win  an  immediate  victory  the  South  consented  to  the  famous 
Missouri  Compromise,  which  they  later  regretted.    Maine,  still  a  part 
of  Massachusetts,  had  received  the  consent  of  her  mother    The  Mis_ 
state   to   separation,  and  her  application  for  statehood    souri  Corn- 
was    now   before  Congress.     It    was    decided    to    admit    ] 
Maine  as  a  free  state  to  balance  Missouri,  which  was  allowed  to  come 
in  as  a  slave  state;  but  it  was  stipulated  that  in  the  remainder  of  the 
Louisiana  territory,  north  of   36°  30'  north    latitude,  the    southern 
boundary  of  Missouri,  slavery  should  be  forever  prohibited.     Henry 
Clay  was  instrumental  in  pushing  this  compromise  through  Congress, 
although  he  was  not  its  author. 

Weighty  consequences  followed  the  compromise  and  the  discussion 
which  it  evoked.  First,  in  prohibiting  slavery  in  the  territory  north 
of  3 6° -30',  another  precedent  was  set  along  the  line  of  the  Resuits  Of 
dealings  of  Congress  with  slavery  in  the  Northwest  the 
Territory,  in  favor  of  the  proposition  that  Congress 
could  control  the  matter  of  slavery  in  the  territories.  This  was  based 
upon  the  clause  of  the  Constitution  which  says  that  "the  Congress 
shall  have  power  to  dispose  of  and  make  all  needful  rules  and  regula 
tions  respecting  the  territory  or  other  property  belonging  to  the  United 
States."  Second,  the  power  of  Congress  to  lay  down  conditions  which 
territories  seeking  statehood  must  meet,  was  emphasized.  Third, 
the  concession  of  the  Southerners  concerning  slavery  north  of  36°  30' 
gradually  led  them  to  the  realization  that  they  had  yielded  too  much  to 
the  free  states  for  their  own  interests  and  they  became  more  insistent 
upon  their  rights.  Fourth,  the  moral  aspects  of  slavery  were  discussed 
as  never  before,  inasmuch  as  the  very  necessities  of  carrying  on  the 
debate,  after  it  was  once  joined,  led  anti-slavery  advocates  to  resort 
to  every  kind  of  attack  on  the  hated  social  system,  and  the  Southerners 


256  NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 

to  defend  their  institution  with  renewed  ardor.  Northerners  advanced 
from  the  mild  arguments  of  the  more  cautious  days,  and  by  denouncing 
slavery  as  a  moral  wrong,  started  a  controversy  that  was  not  to  die  till 
slavery  itself  should  die.  Fifth,  the  wisdom  of  Washington's  farewell 
words  in  regard  to  sectional  political  parties  and  their  danger  to  the 
Union  was  emphasized.  The  aged  Jefferson  wrote:  "This  momentous 
question,  like  a  fire  bell  in  the  night,  awakened  me  and  filled  me  with 
horror.  I  considered  it  at  once  as  the  death  knell  of  the  Union." 

RAPID   GROWTH  OF  SECTIONALISM 

Under  President  Adams  the  sectional  spirit  grew  with  startling 
rapidity.  Relations  with  the  states  of  Central  and  South  America, 

under  the  Monroe  Doctrine,  caused  serious  dispute  and 
Disputes 
over  the  even  led  to  sectional  differences.     From  the  vagueness 

Congress  °^  t^1^s  doctrine  ^  was  difficult  to  determine  how  far  the 
United  States  was  bound  to  cooperate  with  the  southern 
republics.  When  the  new  and  inexperienced  states  of  Mexico,  Central 
America,  Colombia,  and  Peru,  unable  to  decide  what  measures  to  take 
for  the  protection  of  their  lately  won  freedom,  invited  the  United 
States  in  1826  to  meet  with  them  in  a  congress  at  Panama,  President 
Adams  was  anxious  to  accept  the  invitation  promptly.  The  south 
ern  Senators  and  Representatives  in  Washington,  however,  held  back, 
fearing  that  Cuba  and  Porto  Rico  might  be  received  into  the  congress, 
and  that  agitation  for  the  emancipation  of  slaves,  which  had  assumed 
large  proportions  in  South  America,  might  be  communicated  to  these 
neighboring  islands  and  through  them  to  the  United  States.  Nor 
could  the  slaveholders  of  the  United  States  brook  the  idea  of  being 
obliged  to  see  their  commissioners  mingle  on  the  floor  of  the  Panama 
congress  with  the  black  representatives  from  the  free  negro  republic 
of  Haiti,  and  as  a  possible  consequence  later  to  receive  in  Washington 
black  ministers  from  this  state.  The  government  was  so  long  in 
making  up  its  mind  to  send  delegates  that  when  its  commissioners 
arrived  in  Central  America,  the  congress  had  adjourned.  The  weak 
federation  of  republics  attempted  by  the  conference  was  a  failure,  and 
the  treaties  which  it  projected  were  never  signed;  yet  in  this  first  Pan- 
American  Congress,  through  the  statesmanship  of  Bolivar,  a  high 
standard  of  union  and  arbitration  was  set  as  the  ideal  to  which  Ameri 
can  republics  should  aspire  in  their  mutual  relations. 

The  narrow  spirit  of  a  single  section  was  also  arrayed  against  the 
Georgia  and  Federal  government  when  President  Adams  sought  to 
the  Indians,  protect  the  Creek  and  Cherokee  Indians  in  the  state  of 
Georgia  from  what  he  deemed  unfair  treatment.  With  the  aid  and 


REACTION  AGAINST  NATIONALISM  257 

encouragement  of  the  national  government  the  Indians  were  being 
removed  at  this  time  from  various  parts  of  the  seaboard  to  reser 
vations  made  for  them  in  the  public  lands  of  the  West.  As  early 
as  1802  the  national  government  had  promised  to  acquire  the  Indian 
title  to  lands  within  the  state  of  Georgia,  but  when  Adams  took 
office  in  1825  they  were  still  undisturbed  in  some  of  the  best  lands 
of  the  state.  Action  was  slow  under  a  new  treaty  of  1825,  by  which 
the  Creeks  ceded  their  lands  to  the  United  States,  and  the  impatient 
state  proceeded  to  survey  the  lands  in  question.  When  the  President 
warned  him  to  desist,  the  governor  bluntly  threatened  civil  war. 
Within  two  years  the  Creeks  finally  consented  in  a  new  treaty  to 
give  up  their  lands,  and  the  issue  between  the  state  and  the  Federal 
government  was  avoided.  Georgia  was  plainly  taking  the  extreme 
attitude  of  states'  rights.  "Georgia  is  sovereign  on  her  own  soil," 
declared  the  state's  executive. 

In  the  meantime  the  Cherokees  were  still  holding  lands  in  Georgia, 
which  they  had  not  ceded  to  the  United  States.     They  even  made  a 
constitution    and   set   up   a   government    of    their   own,    President 
creating  practically  a  "  state  within  a  state,"  prohibited    Adams 
by  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States.    Georgia  replied    thwar 
by  the  assertion  of  her  own  jurisdiction  over  the  Cherokee  lands  and 
their  incorporation  in  five  counties  of  the  state.     The  President  did 
all  he  could  to  defend  the  Indians  until  they  could  be  legally  removed, 
but  the  Senate  refused  to  support  him,  and  the  humiliating  spectacle 
was  presented  of  the  President  of  the  United  States  left  powerless 
before  the  defiance  of  a  single  state. 

Even  the  national  bank,  which  had  found  favor  in  Congress  during 
Madison's  administrations,  now  encountered  the  active  opposition  of 

various    sections.     The    supporters    of    the    rival    state 

,  .     ,  .     ,  .     ,         Reaction 

banks  were  jealous  or  tne  superiority  ot  the  notes  ol  the    against  the 

national    bank.     They    feared,    too,    the    power    of    the 

national  institution  to  crush  a  state  bank  at  any  moment 

by  collecting  the  notes  of  that  bank  and  suddenly  presenting  them  for 

payment. 

Laws  harassing  the  national  bank  were  passed  in  various  state 
legislatures.     Maryland  laid  a  heavy  tax  on  the  business  of  the  bank, 
till  the  Supreme  Court  decided  that  it  must  desist.     The    The  supreme 
power  to  tax,  said  Chief  Justice  Marshall,  in  reading  the    Court  and 
decision  of  the  court  in  McCulloch  v.  Maryland  in  1819, 
is  the  equivalent  of  the  power  to  destroy,  and  no  state  ought  to  have 
the  power  to  destroy  an  institution  which  was  set  up  by  a  constitutional 
law  of  Congress.     The  constitutionality  of  the  bank  of  the  United 


258  NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 

States  rested  on  the  " necessary  and  proper  clause"  of  the  Constitution. 
In  lucid  language  the  decision  explained  and  defended  the  doctrine 
of  implied  powers.  "  Among  the  enumerated  powers,  we  do  not  find 
that  of  establishing  a  bank  or  creating  a  corporation.  But  there  is  no 
phrase  in  the  instrument  which,  like  the  Articles  of  Confederation, 
excludes  incidental  or  implied  powers;  and  which  requires  that 
everything  granted  shall  be  expressly  and  minutely  described.  .  .  . 
A  constitution  to  contain  an  accurate  detail  of  all  the  subdivisions  of 
which  its  great  powers  will  admit,  and  of  all  the  means  by  which  they 
may  be  carried  into  execution,  would  partake  of  the  prolixity  of  a 
legal  code,  and  could  scarcely  be  embraced  by  the  human  mind.  It 
would  probably  never  be  understood  by  the  public.  .  .  .  But  we 
think  that  the  sound  construction  of  the  Constitution  must  allow  to 
the  national  legislature  that  discretion,  with  respect  to  the  means  by 
which  the  powers  it  confers  are  to  be  carried  into  execution,  which  will 
enable  that  body  to  perform  the  high  duties  assigned  to  it,  in  the 
manner  most  beneficial  to  the  people." 

After  this  decision  the  bank  was  safe  so  long  as  its  charter  con 
tinued,  though  whether  or  not  the  charter,  which  would  expire  in  1836, 
would  be  renewed  by  Congress,  was  an  open  question.  This  de 
pended  upon  the  will  of  the  people.  Following  after  the  decision  in 
Marbury  v.  Madison  in  1803,  the  decision  in  the  case  of  McCulloch 
v.  Maryland  was  the  court's  next  important  judgment  bearing  on  the 
fundamental  organization  of  the  national  government. 

Several  years  later  the  Supreme  Court  rendered  a  decision  more 
The  court  to  the  liking  of  the  friends  of  the  state  banks,  when  it 
and  the  ruled  that  the  right  of  these  institutions  to  issue  their 

of  the  state7  notes  to  circulate  as  money  was  within  the  Constitution, 
banks.  j£  tne  state  granting  their  charters  itself  held  a  portion 

of  their  stock. 

The  Supreme  Court  at  about  the  same  time  rendered  several  other 
important  decisions  bearing  upon  the  rights  and  powers  of  the  states 
Nationalizing  under  the  Constitution.  In  the  Dartmouth  College  case, 
decisions  of  1819,  it  was  held  that  a  charter  granted  by  a  state  was 
TheCDart-  a  contract,  which  that  -state  could  not  change  or  break, 
mouth  Col-  because  it  was  forbidden  by  the  Constitution  to  pass 
laws  "impairing  the  obligations  of  contracts." 

The  decision  in  Gibbons  v.  Ogden,  1824,  has  been  recognized  as  the 
basis  of  all  subsequent  construction  of  the  interstate  commerce  clause  of 
Gibbons  the  Constitution.  In  this  it  was  held  that  the  power  of 

v. Ogden.  Congress  to  "regulate  commerce,.  .  .  among  the  several 
states"  embraced  the  right  to  prescribe  rules  by  which  the  navigation 


REACTION  AGAINST  NATIONALISM  259 

of  the  great  rivers  was  to  be  governed,  and  that  therefore  the  states 
could  not  control  these  waters. 

In  Fletcher  v.  Peck,  1810,  the  court  definitely  exercised  its  power 
to  set  aside  a  state  law,  which  was  a  step  in  advance  of  the  decision 
in  Marbury  v.  Madison,  in  which,  it  will  be  remembered,  Martitl  ^ 
the  supreme  tribunal  had  applied  the  doctrine  of  judicial 
nullification  of  laws  only  to  a  law  of  Congress.  In  Martin 
v.  Hunter's  Lessee,  1816,  the  judgment  of  a  state  court  was  reversed. 
"A  motive  of  another  kind,"  it  said,  " perfectly  compatible  with  the 
most  sincere  respect  for  state  tribunals,  might  induce  the  grant  of 
appellate  power  over  their  decisions.  That  motive  is  the  importance 
and  even  necessity  of  uniformity  of  decisions  throughout  the  whole 
United  States,  upon  all  subjects  within  the  purview  of  the  Constitu 
tion.  Judges  of  equal  learning  and  integrity,  in  different  states, 
might  differently  interpret  a  statute,  or  a-  treaty  of  the  United  States, 
or  even  the  Constitution  itself.  If  there  were  no  revising  authority 
to  control  these  jarring  and  discordant  judgments,  and  harmonize 
them  into  uniformity,  the  laws,  the  treaties,  and  the  Constitution  of 
the  United  States  would  be  different  in  different  states,  and  might, 
perhaps,  never  have  precisely  the  same  construction,  obligation,  or 
efficacy  in  any  two  states.  The  public  mischiefs  that  would  attend 
such  a  state  of  things  would  be  truly  deplorable." 

The  Supreme  Court  was  proving  a  tower  of  strength  for  nationalism, 
against  which   the  adherents  of  states'  rights  could  do    The  judi- 

nothing  but  object,  for  they  had  no  means  at  all  compar-    clary  a 

J  «•        ,1       *  r     stronghold 

able  to  the  power  of  the  court,  of  controlling  the  form  of    pf  national- 

the  national  government  and  the  extent  of  its  legitimate    lsm- 
activities. 

The  protective  tariff,  though  widely  approved  under  Monroe,  did 
not  under  Adams  continue  to  enjoy  the  favor  of  all  sections.     A  new 
law  extending  the  system  and  raising  the  rates  was  passed    Reaction 
in  1818  and  another  in  1824;  another,  known  as  "The    against  the 
Tariff  of  Abominations,"  in  which  the  high-water  mark  of 
protective  tariff  legislation  down  to  the  Civil  War  was  reached,  was 
passed  in  1828,  but  this  met  with  bitter  opposition. 

South  Carolina  led  the  opposition.     To  express  her  remonstrance 
against  "The  Tariff   of  Abominations,"  the   state   legis-    The  "Expo- 
lature  passed  the  celebrated  "Exposition  and  Protest,"    sition  and 
prepared  for  it  by  Vice  President  Calhoun.     Formerly  an    south 
ardent  nationalist,  champion  of  loose  construction  of  the    Carolina' 
Constitution,  and  upholder  of  the  Union  of  the  states,  at  the  close  of 
the  War  of  1812,  Calhoun  now  came  forward  as  the  champion  of  states' 


260 


NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 


rights,  strict  construction,  nullification  of  the  laws  of  Congress  by  the 
states,  and  possible  secession.  He  was  not  an  orator,  but  with  resist 
less  logic  he  forged  arguments  for  his  new  position  which  had  a  powerful 
influence  throughout  the  South  in  his  own  day  and  down  to  the  Civil 

War.  After  him,  advocates  of  his 
principles  had  little  to  do  in  the 
way  of  argument  beyond  quoting 
his  words.  "The  good  people  of 
the  commonwealth,"  ran  the  "  Ex 
position  and  Protest,"  "  believe 
that  the  powers  of  Congress  were 
delegated  to  it,  in  trust,  for  the  ac 
complishment  of  certain  specified 
objects,  which  limit  and  control 
them;  and  that  every  exercise  of 
them,  for  any  other  purposes  is  a 
violation  of  the  Constitution,  as 
unwarrantable  as  the  undisguised 
assumption  of  substantive  inde 
pendent  powers,  not  granted  or 
expressly  withheld."  The  docu 
ment  maintained  that  to  lay  a  tax 
for  the  benefit  of  manufacturers 
was  not  a  power  delegated  to  Con 
gress,  and  that  such  a  protective 
tariff  was  therefore  unconstitu 
tional.  Calhoun  urged  further 
more  that  his  native  state  should 
hold  a  state  convention  to  decide 

how  the  tariff  law  "  ought  to  be  declared  null  and  void  within  the 
limits  of  the  state." 

Circumstances   had   altered   South    Carolina's   attitude   toward   a 
protective  tariff,  and  Calhoun  had  changed  with  his  section.     In  1816 
South  Carolina  favored  the  tariff  because  she  hoped  to 
of  South  build   up   manufacturing  industries  within   her  borders, 

c*Foljjia's  particularly  cotton  manufacturing;  but  the  ignorant 
black  slaves  proved  unfit  for  the  factory,  and  profitable 
manufacturing  with  such  labor  was  found  to  be  an  impossibility. 
The  state  saw  with  dismay  the  progress  of  manufacturing  in  New 
England  under  the  stimulus  of  the  tariff,  and  the  belief  grew  upon  her 
that  the  Federal  Union  was  working  to  the  injury  of  the  South,  that  the 
benefits  of  the  Union  were  accruing  to  the  North  and  its  burdens  to  the 


JOHN  C.  CALHOUN 


REACTION  AGAINST  NATIONALISM  261 

South.  The  Southerners  felt  that,  while  in  the  colonial  days  their 
colonies  had  been  the  seat  of  power  and  riches  beyond  anything  in  the 
North,  they  were  now  being  outstripped  by  the  commercial  North 
east.  In  the  year  1760  the  foreign  imports  of  Virginia  and  South 
Carolina  exceeded  those  of  New  York  and  New  England  together. 
In  1821  those  of  South  Carolina  were  practically  the  same  as  in  1760, 
while  New  York's  in  the  same  interval  had  increased  over  one  hundred 
fold,  to  $23,000,000;  in  1832  New  York's  imports  stood  at  $57,000,000, 
those  of  Virginia  at  $500,000,  and  those  of  South  Carolina  at  $1,250,000. 
This  disproportionate  growth  of  the  sections  led  to  the  view  that  there 
was  an  "incompatibility  of  interest"  between  the  North  and  the 
South,  and  that  Southerners  were  justified  in  opposing  what  they 
considered  oppressive  Federal  laws,  passed  through  northern  influence. 
Another  aspect  of  the  situation  added  to  the  irritation.  The  cotton- 
growing  interests  of  South  Carolina  were  feeling  the  competition  of 
the  agricultural  sections  of  the  Southwest.  The  manufacturing 
Northeast  and  the  agricultural  Northwest  supplemented  one  another, 
but  the  Southeast  and  the  Southwest,  both  agricultural,  instead  of 
supplementing  one  another,  were  in  actual  rivalry.  The  strain  of 
hard  times  thus  produced,  increased  the  bitterness  of  South  Carolina 
against  the  tariff. 

Finally,  the  spirit  of  sectionalism  in  Congress  prevented  the  adoption 
by  the  national  government  of  the  general  policy  of  internal  improve 
ments,  already  rejected  by  three  administrations,  but  now    Reaction 
favored  by  the  President.     Presidents  Jefferson,  Madison,    against 
and  Monroe  had  opposed  the  construction  of  internal    internal  im- 
improvements  at  the  expense  of  the  nation,  as  not  author-    pavements, 
ized  by  the  strict  letter  of  the  Constitution.    John  Quincy  Adams  was 
a  President  of  broad  national  views,  willing  and  eager  to  commit  the 
nation  to  such  a  policy,  but  the  country  was  reacting  from  its  burst 
of  nationalism  and  Congress  in  its  turn  held  back.     Speaking  of  the 
Cumberland  Road  in  his  first  annual  message,  Adams  exclaimed,  "To 
how  many  thousand  of  our  countrymen  has  it  proved  a  benefit!     To 
what  single  individual  has  it  ever  proved  an  injury?"     He  would 
have  Congress  spend  millions  in  building  government  roads,  canals,  and 
other   improvements.      If   President   Adams   had   had   his   way,    the 
United  States  would  probably  own  to-day  the  railroads  and  canals  and 
many  of  the  wagon  roads  of  the  country;  but  Congress  would  take  no 
action. 

In  addition  to  the  constitutional  arguments  against  expenditure 
of  national  funds  for  internal  improvements,  the  conditions  of  the 
times  were  bringing  forward  new  objections.  The  South  in  general 


262  NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 

stood  opposed  to  the  policy,  for  as  an  agricultural  section  she  had  no 
such  interest  in  the  development  of  a  rival  agricultural  section  in  the 
West  and  in  the  development  of  transportation  facilities  thither,  as  had 
the  North,  which  was  rinding  a  market  for  manufactured  goods  in  the 
o  ositi  n  newly  settled  regions.  Another  reason  for  opposition  to 
to  President  President  Adams's  schemes  was  the  willingness  of  the  rival 
commercial  cities  and  states  of  the  seaboard,  in  pursuance 
of  their  own  advantage,  to  undertake  internal  improve 
ments  themselves.  Already  they  were  engaged  in  the  task.  Each  was 
struggling  to  improve  its  own  transportation  facilities  with  the  West, 
in  order  to  secure  that  great  and  growing  market  for  itself.  Thus 
an  improved  transportation  system  was  springing  into  existence,  and 
the  increased  interaction  of  the  East  and  the  West  was  assured. 

The  merchants  of  the  City  of  New  York  perceived  that  it  would 
be  a  source  of  profit  to  them  if  they  could  bring  it  about,  that  the 
The  Erie  Sram  and  otner  fo°d  products  of  the  West  should  come 

Canal  of  to  their  city  for  distribution,  that  the  West  should  buy 

its  necessary  supplies  in  New  York,  and  that  immi 
grants  bound  for  the  West  should  traverse  their  state.  They  induced 
the  state  to  build  a  canal  four  feet  deep,  forty  feet  wide,  and  three 
hundred  and  sixty  miles  long,  from  Albany  on  the  Hudson  to  Buffalo 
on  Lake  Erie,  in  order  to  afford  continuous  water  communication 
by  river  and  canal  from  New  York  City  to  the  Great  Lakes.  Con 
struction  was  begun  July  4,  1817,  and  amid  great  enthusiasm  the  work 
was  declared  completed  in  1825,  when  Governor  De  Witt  Clinton  of 
New  York  poured  a  keg  of  water  from  Lake  Erie  into  the  waters  of  the 
Atlantic  at  New  York.  The  undertaking  cost  originally  $7,000,000 
and  has  been  improved  from  time  to  time.  Within  late  years  $101,- 
000,000  has  been  voted  by  the  state  for  further  improvement  of 
its  great  canal  system. 

The  building  of  the  Erie  Canal  was  one  of  the  shrewdest  things  the 
merchants  of  New  York  ever  did  to  advance  their  interests.  Anyone 
The  benefits  might  navigate  a  boat  on  the  new  thoroughfare  by  the 
of  the  canal,  payment  of  a  small  fee,  and  so  large  was  the  volume  of 
traffic  that  in  a  short  time,  in  spite  of  the  low  rates  of  toll,  the  pro 
ceeds  paid  for  the  entire  cost  of  construction  and  furnished  a  surplus  for 
improvements.  A  ton  of  flour  which  formerly  required  several  weeks 
for  conveyance  from  Albany  to  Buffalo  at  a  cost  of  $100  or  more, 
now  went  through  in  as  many  days  for  $10.  The  population  of  New 
York  City  in  ten  years  increased  from  124,000  to  203,000,  while  along 
the  route  of  the  canal  Rochester,  Syracuse,  Utica,  and  other  centers 
also  experienced  sudden  prosperity.  Buffalo,  Cleveland,  Detroit,  and 


REACTION  AGAINST  NATIONALISM 


263 


Chicago  on  the  Great  Lakes  entered  upon  a  rapid  growth,  and  for  the 
first  time  began  to  rival  the  river  cities  of  Pittsburg,  Cincinnati,  and 
St.  Louis.  St.  Louis  and  New  Orleans  suffered,  for  the  western  farmers, 
who  had  formerly  sought  their  market  down  the  Mississippi  to  New 


CANAL  BOAT  IN  1825 

Orleans,  preferred  the  New  York  market  and  gradually  diverted  thither 
a  large  part  of  their  shipments.  Another  important  result  of  the  canal 
was  the  jealous  imitation  aroused  in  the  other  cities  on  the  coast. 

Philadelphia  could  not  sit  still  while  the  new  western  trade  was 
slipping  away  to  her  rival  on  the  Hudson.  July  4,  1826,  a  few  months 
after  the  completion  of  New  York's  canal,  the  Quaker  philadel- 
City  had  occasion  to  rejoice  when  the  state  of  Penn-  phia's  canal, 
sylvania  began  the  construction  of  a  canal  in  her  interests,  which  was 
finished  in  nine  years,  stretching  across  the  state  from  Philadelphia 
to  Pittsburg.  For  a  part  of  the  way  the  boats  of  the  canal  were 
carried  over  the  mountains  by  a  specially  constructed  inclined  railway. 
A  rise  in  the  ground  of  two  thousand  feet  over  a  distance  of  three 
hundred  and  twenty  miles  had  to  be  conquered,  which  made  the 
work  more  difficult  of  construction  than  that  in  New  York,  where  the 
rise  in  the  ground  over  a  distance  of  three  hundred  and  sixty  miles 
was  only  five  hundred  feet. 

18' 


264  NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 

Not  to  be  outdone,  Baltimore,  farther  south,  on  July  4,  1828,  began 
the. construction  of  the  Chesapeake  and  Ohio  Canal  to  the  Ohio  Valley. 
Canals  for  Boston,  too,  unwilling  to  be  left  out  of  the  race,  planned 
Baltimore  to  tunnel  through  the  mountains  of  western  Massachu 
setts,  to  secure  canal  connections  with  the  West  for  her 
interests;  and  the  Hoosac  Tunnel  was  accordingly  constructed,  but 
when  completed  in  1874  was  utilized  by  a  railroad  and  not  by  a 
canal. 

The  new  canals  were  hardly  in  working  order  when  a  rival  appeared 
which  was  destined  to  supplant  them  almost  entirely.  The  initial 
A  rival  of  contest  between  canal  and  railroad  was  begun  at  Balti- 
the  canals.  mOre,  where  on  July  4,  1828,  the  very  day  when  work  on 
the  Chesapeake  and  Ohio  Canal  was  started,  a  rival  company  began 
to  lay  down  on  the  ground  two  continuous  smooth  rails,  over  which 
an  engine  and  cars  were  to  run  by  steam. 

George  Stephenson,  a  British  engineer,  invented  the  first  steam 
locomotive  in  1814,  and  in  1825  succeeded  in  putting  into  operation  in 
The  early  Great  Britain  the  first  steam  railway  for  the  transportation 
railroads.  of  berth  freight  and  passengers.  The  first  engine  to  run 
successfully  in  the  United  States  was  built  in  1830  by  an  American, 
Peter  Cooper,  for  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railroad.  The  new  rail 
road  was  slow  in  construction  and  did  not  reach  the  Ohio  River  until 
1853;  but  the  Chesapeake  and  Ohio  Canal  never  got  beyond  Cumber 
land,  Maryland,  and  although  still  in  operation  it  has  never  been  a 
decided  success.  As  a  rival  of  the  canal  system  of  Pennsylvania,  the 
Pennsylvania  Railroad  was  begun  in  1845,  and  in  nine  years  suc 
ceeded  in  establishing  connections  from  Philadelphia  as  far  west  as 
Pittsburg.  So  successful  was  the  road  that  it  soon  bought  out  the 
state  canals  and  in  the  end  abandoned  their  operation  entirely.  Bos 
ton's  projected  canal  was  supplanted  by  the  line  which  is  now  known 
as  the  Fitchburg  Division  of  the  Boston  and  Maine.  The  New  York 
Central  Railroad  never  succeeded  in  driving  the  Erie  Canal  out  of 
business,  for  so  large  is  the  traffic  from  the  West  through  New  York 
State  that  at  times  railroads  and  canals  together  accommodate  it  with 
difficulty. 

Says  Professor  Coman,  comparing  canals  and  railroads:  "Canal  traf- 

.fic  was  safe  and  cheap,  but  slow  and  liable  to  be  interrupted  by  slack 

water,  floods,  or  frost.     The  Erie   Canal,  for  example, 

orifyS<rfPrail-      freezes   over  in   winter,   and  navigation  is   stopped  for 

roads  over        from  f our  to  five  months  in  the  year.     A  railroad  can  be 

built  through  mountainous  country  at  one-third  the  cost 

of  a  canal,  and  over  heights  to  which  water  cannot  be  conducted;    A 


REACTION  AGAINST  NATIONALISM 


265 


car  run  on  wheels,  fitted  to  the  iron  track,  encounters  less  friction 
than  a  wagon  on  a  turnpike,  less  resistance  than  a  boat  in  water." 

After  the  steamboat  the  steam  locomotive  was  the  modern  world's 
next   great   improvement   in    methods  of    transportation.     The   pre 
diction  that  the  United  States  would  some  day  break  up    The  Union 
because  of  long  distances  and  consequent  lack  of  common    strengthened, 
interests  was  losing  its  force.     The  new  method  of   transportation 


"  DE  WITT  CLINTON  "  AND  TRAIN 

The  first  train  in  the  state  of  New  York,  operated  in  1831  between  Albany  and 
Schenectady. 

could  conquer  nature  as  turnpikes  and  canals  never  could.  The 
latter  merely  facilitated  commerce  along  existing  or  natural  routes  of 
trade.  Methods  more  ambitious  were  needed  to  connect  the  East 
with  the  growing  West. 

THE   PRESIDENTIAL   ELECTION   OF  1828 

John  Quincy  Adams  came  to  the  presidency  a  firm  believer  in 
strong  national  powers,  like  those  favored  by  Congress  after  the  War 

of  1812,  but  every  one  of  his  cherished  measures  failed,    , 

\  The  failure 

because  large  sections  of  the  country  had  come  to  repu-    Of  President 

diate  such  policies.  Sectionalism  had  succeeded  nation 
alism,  "hard  feelings"  had  taken  the  place  of  "good 
feelings."  For  Adams  the  "times  were  out  of  joint."  He  had  failed 
to  secure  the  backing  of  the  country  in  his  attitude  toward  the  Panama 
Congress  and  in  his  treatment  of  the  Indians,  and  though  favored 
by  him  the  national  bank,  the  national  tariff,  and  national  internal 
improvements  had  fallen  into  disrepute. 


Adams's 
measures. 


266  NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 

When  the  presidential  year  of  1828  came  round,  there  was  still  the 
single  Democratic-Republican  or  National-Republican  party,  split, 
The  Presi-  however,  into  two  factions  headed  respectively  by  Presi 
dential  elec-  dent  Adams  and  Andrew  Jackson.  The  congressional 
caucus  method  of  nominating  the  President  having  been 
thoroughly  discredited  in  the  contest  of  1824,  the  legislatures  of  the 
various  states  temporarily  exercised  this  function.  Jackson's  cam 
paign  for  1828  began  in  the  first  year  of  Adams's  presidency  with  his 
nomination  by  the  legislature  of  his  own  state  of  Tennessee.  The 
movement,  carefully  nurtured  by  the  cry  of  "bargain  and  corrup 
tion"  arising  out  of  the  struggle  of  1824,  was  promoted  from  time  to 
time  by  the  legislatures  of  many  other  states.  Several  northern 
legislatures  renominated  President  Adams. 

Every  effort  was  made  to  keep  Jackson  before  the  public  as  a 
military  hero,  who  had  been  cheated  out  of  the  presidency  in  1824 
The  result  ^Y  the  fraud  of  the  politicians  and  deserved  vindica 
tion.  His  enemies  instanced  against  him  his  duels  and 
quarrels,  recounted  his  alleged  though  never  proved  connection  with 
the  conspiracy  of  Aaron  Burr,  and  his  arbitrary  military  executions 
while  governor  of  the  territory  of  Florida.  The  issue  was  personal, 
and  Andrew  Jackson,  "the  people's  idol,"  was  elected  by  178  electoral 
votes  to  83  for  Adams.  Calhoun  was  reflected  Vice  President. 

GENERAL   REFERENCES 

MCMASTER,  United  States,  V;  D.  C.  OILMAN,  James  Monroe;  MORSE,  John  Quincy 
Adams;  SCHURZ,  Henry  Clay,  I,  126-310. 

SPECIAL  TOPICS 

1.  THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE.     T.  B.  EDGINGTON,  Monroe  Doctrine;  BEARD,  Ameri 
can  Government  and  Politics,  333-337;  Contemporaries,  III,  494-501;  J.  B.  MOORE, 
American  Diplomacy,  131-167;  Old  South  Leaflets,  III,  56;  Epochs,  V,  133-143;  F.  E. 
CHADWICK,  Relations  of  the  United  States  and  Spain,  148-204;  PAXSON,  Independence 
of  the  South  American  Republics. 

2.  THE  MISSOURI  COMPROMISE.     TURNER,  New  West,  149-171;  Epochs,  V,  147- 
153;  RHODES,  United  States,  I,  29-39;  HARDING,  Orations,  191-211. 

3.  JOHN  MARSHALL  AND  THE  SUPREME  COURT.     J.  B.  THAYER,  John  Marshall; 
A.  B.  MAGRUDER,  John  Marshall;  C.  WARREN,  American  Bar,  402-405. 

4.  THE  ERIE  CANAL.     HULBERT,  Historic  Highways,  XIV;  MCMASTER,  United 
States,  IV,  415-418  and  V,  132-138;  TURNER,  New  West,  32-36;  Epochs,  V,  161-175; 
SPARKS,  Expansion,  259-269. 

5.  THE  FIRST  RAILROADS.    DUNBAR,  Travel  in  America,  see  index;  SPARKS,  Ex- 


REACTION  AGAINST  NATIONALISM  267 

SUGGESTIVE  QUESTIONS 

How  do  you  account  for  the  rise  and  for  the  decline  of  the  era  of  good  feeling? 
Why  was  there  so  little  opposition  to  the  annexation  of  Florida?  Compare  Jefferson's 
motives  in  seeking  the  purchase  of  Louisiana  and  those  of  Monroe  in  announcing  the 
Monroe  Doctrine.  What  was  the  influence  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  on 
slavery?  of  the  Constitution?  of  the  industrial  revolution?  of  the  cotton  gin?  How 
do  you  account  for  the  failure  of  the  great  measures  of  the  administration  of  J.  Q. 
Adams?  Did  Vice  President  Calhoun  break  his  oath  of  office  to  support  the  Consti 
tution  when  he  wrote  the  "Exposition  and  Protest"  ?  What  can  you  say  in  favor  of 
the  proposition  that  John  Marshall  was  one  of  the  great  statesmen  of  the  country  in 
the  first  part  of  the  nineteenth  century?  Why  was  the  Supreme  Court  unpopular 
while  Marshall  presided  over  it?  Was  South  Carolina  justified  in  her  attitude  toward 
the  tariff  in  1828?  What  were  the  leading  issues  in  current  politics  before  the  people 
in  the  presidential  campaigns  of  1816,  1820,  1824,  and  1828? 


CHAPTER  XIX 


JACKSONIAN   DEMOCRACY 

THE   SPOILS   SYSTEM 

ANDREW  JACKSON,  the  first  frontier  President,  proved  to  be  one  of 
the  strongest  Presidents  in  the  history  of  the  country.  He  was  born 
Andrew  of  Scotch-Irish  immigrant  parents  at  Waxhaw  in  north- 

Jackson.  ern   South   Carolina  in  the  year  1767;   and   like   Henry 

Clay,  as  a  young  man  he  joined  the  westward  movement,  settling 

in  eastern  Tennessee.  By  his 
prowess  against  the  Creek,  Chero 
kee,  and  Seminole  Indians,  and 
against  the  British  at  New  Or 
leans,  he  made  himself  the  hero  of 
the  western  frontier  and  indeed  of 
the  whole  Union.  He  lacked  not 
only  the  culture  and  education  of 
the  schools  but  also  tl/e  training  in 
statesmanship  which/his  predeces 
sors  in  the  presidential  office  had 
possessed;  but  as  a  plain  man  of 
the  people  he  knew  the  needs  of 
the  people,  and  as  a  trained  man 
of  action  he  succeeeded  in  admin 
istering  the  government  in  their 
favor  with  military  directness.  He 
was  as  honest  as  the  day  is  long; 
his  genius  for  command  was  al 
most  superhuman;  and  the  people 
followed  him  as  they  had  followed 
no  other  leader  since  Jefferson.  Clay,  Webster,  Adams,  and  the  other 
prominent  men  of  the  time,  even  Vice  President  Calhoun,  figure  in 
the  story  of  his  " reign"  merely  as  his  opponents.  Few  strong  men 
took  a  place  in  his  cabinet. 

The  administration  of  Jackson  ushered  in  an  even  more  democratic 
era  than  that  of  Jefferson.  The  people  regarded  Jackson  as  their 

268 


ANDREW  JACKSON 


JACKSONIAN  DEMOCRACY  269 

special  representative,  and  came  to  Washington  in  crowds  to  see  him 
inaugurated.     Daniel  Webster  described  the  demonstra-    The  new 
tions  at  the  inauguration  as  follows:  "I  never  saw  such    regime  of 
a  crowd  before.    Persons  have  come  hundreds  of  miles  to 
see  General  Jackson  and  they  really  seem  to  think  that  the  country  is 
rescued  from  some  dreadful  danger.     At  the  White  House  the  crowds 
upset  the  pails  of  punch,  broke  the  glasses,  and  stood  with  their  muddy 
boots  in  the  satin-covered  chairs  to  see  the  people's  President." 

A  large  number  of  these  visitors  to  Washington  were  office-seekers, 
and  in  the  interest  of  this  class  Jackson  disregarded  the  excellent  ex 
ample  of  his  predecessors  in  the  matter  of  appointments  to  The  spoils 
office.  Hundreds  of  office-holders,  who  had  occupied  their  system- 
posts  for  many  years  and  were  therefore  both  experienced  and  efficient, 
he  removed  from  office  for  the  single  reason  that  they  did  not  belong 
to  his  faction  and  had  not  voted  for  him,  and  gave  their  places  to  the 
"boys"  who  had  supported  him.  The  "boys"  were  most  of  them 
inexperienced  and  many  of  them  inefficient,  but  that  made  no  difference 
to  Jackson,  who  believed  that  "to  the  victor  belong  the  spoils."  This 
was  the  celebrated  "spoils  system,"  which  for  the  next  fifty  years  was 
more  instrumental  than  any  other  one  influence  in  rendering  public 
service  inefficient.  It  is  a  thoroughly  unbusinesslike  system,  which 
the  present  civil  service  reform  is  now  gradually  undermining;  yet, 
when  measured  by  the  standards  of  his  contemporaries,  Jackson  must 
be  relieved  of  a  part  of  the  odium  that  would  otherwise  attach  to  his 
name  for  adopting  it,  for  his  attitude  toward  the  public  service  was  a 
common  one  in  his  day.  The  spoils  system  in  fact  was  introduced 
into  national  politics  from  the  state  politics  of  New  York  and  Penn 
sylvania. 

John   Adams  had  not  removed  the   appointees  of   Washington; 
Jefferson,  leading  a  new  party  into  power  in  1801,  did  not  remove  all 
the  Federal  office-holders,  but  only  a  restricted  number,    The  attitude 
in  order,  as  he  said,  to  even  up  the  two  parties  in  the    of  former 
control   of   the   offices.     As  the  Democratic-Republican    towanHhe 
administrations   continued,    more   and  more  Federalists    civil  service- 
were  weeded  out,  until  at  last  most  of  the  national  offices  were  held 
by  members  of   the  single  dominant  party.     When  the  Democratic- 
Republicans  began  to  break  up  into  factions  under  John  Quincy 
Adams,  that  President  refused  to  advance  his  own  political  fortunes 
by  removing   from   office   those  who  were  opposed  to  him.     What 
Adams  refused  to  do,  Jackson  had  no  scruples  in  doing. 


270 


NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 


THE   TARIFF  AND    NULLIFICATION 

The  sectionalism  which  had  been  rapidly  developing  since  about 
1820  was  still  rampant.  Less  than  a  year  after  Jackson  took  up 
The  Web-  t^ie  rems  °f  office,  a  great  constitutional  debate  on  the 
ster-Hayne  nature  of  the  Union  took  place  in  the  United  States 
Senate  between  Daniel  Webster  of  Massachusetts  and 
Robert  Hayne  of  South  Carolina.  The  immediate  occasion  of  the 

debate  was  a  motion  by 
a  Senator  from  Connecticut 
that  the  government  for  the 
time  being  should  desist  from 
further  sale  of  public  lands  in 
the  West.  The  motion  was 
looked  upon  as  springing  from 
"  jealousy  of  the  West  and  a 
desire  to  retard  its  growth," 
and  was  opposed  by  both 
western  and  southern  mem 
bers.  Already  aroused 
against  the  national  govern 
ment  and  especially  against 
New  England,  as  a  result  of 
the  tariff  controversy  of  1828, 
the  South  was  ready  to  join 
another  section  in  resistance 
to  the  control  of  national 
policy  by  the  commercial 
Northeast. 

Hayne  left  the  immediate 
subject  of  the  land  sales  to 

launch  into  a  bitter  attack  upon  New  England,  and  ended  with  an  elo 
quent  outburst  in  support  of  Calhoun's  "  Exposition  and 
Protest"  of  1828.  Webster  replied  as  the  champion  of 
New  England,  and  delivered  one  of  the  greatest  orations 
in  the  history  of  Congress.  He  opened  with  a  spirited 
defense  of  his  section,  and  then,  turning  to  Hayne's  exposition  of 
states'  rights,  sought  to  arouse  the  enthusiasm  of  his  hearers  for  the 
national  Union  and  for  the  Supreme  Court  as  the  common  judge  be 
tween  the  Union  and  the  states.  He  pointed  out  the  absurdities  of  the 
arguments  of  Calhoun  and  eloquently  pictured  the  benefits  of  Union. 
According  to  his  view,  the  people  and  not  the  states  made  the  Consti- 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 


Webster's 
attack  on 
states' 
rights. 


JACKSONIAN  DEMOCRACY  271 

tution  and  declared  it  to  be  the  supreme  law  of  the  land;  the  general 
government  was  not  the  mere  agent  of  the  states  but  was  supreme 
over  them  by  the  Constitution.  He  poured  ridicule  on  the  idea  that 
the  United  States  was ''servant  of  four  and  twenty  masters,  of  different 
wills  and  different  purposes  and  yet  bound  to  obey  all.  .  .  .  It  so  hap 
pens  that  at  the  very  moment  when  South  Carolina  resolves  that  the 
tariff  laws  are  unconstitutional,  Pennsylvania  and  Kentucky  resolve 
exactly  the  reverse.  .  .  .  Does  not  this  approach  absurdity?  .  .  .  It  is  too 
plain  to  be  argued.  Four  and  twenty  interpreters  of  constitutional  law, 
each  with  a  power  to  decide  for  itself,  and  none  with  authority  to  bind 
anybody  else,  and  this  constitutional  law  the  only  bond  of  their  Union! " 

When  a  state  law  came  into  conflict  with  a  law  of  the  United  States, 
the  difference,  Webster  declared,  should  be  decided  by  the  Supreme 
Court,  as  the  Constitution  itself  provided,  and  not  by  Abhorrence 
the  states.  For  a  state  to  decide  for  itself  to  annul  a  na-  of  civil  war- 
tional  law  would  amount  to  a  challenge  to  the  authorities  of  the  United 
States  to  rise  up  and  assert  themselves  in  defense  of  the  Union,  the 
direct  result  of  which  would  be  a  lamentable  collision  "between  force 
and  force.  This  the  orator  could  not  sanction.  "  While  the  Union 
lasts,  we  have  high,  exciting,  gratifying  prospects  spread  out  before 
us,  for  us  and  our  children.  Beyond  that  I  seek  not  to  penetrate  the 
veil.  God  grant  that  in  my  day  at  least,  that  curtain  may  not  rise. 
God  grant  that  on  my  vision  may  never  be  opened  what  lies  beyond. 
When  my  eyes  shall  be  turned  to  behold,  for  the  last  time,  the  Sun  in 
Heaven,  may  I  not  see  him  shining  on  the  broken  and  dishonored 
fragments  of  a  once  glorious  Union;  on  states  dissevered,  discordant, 
belligerent;  on  a  land  rent  with  civil  feuds,  or  drenched,  it  may  be,  in 
fraternal  blood!  Let  their  last  feeble  and  lingering  glance,  rather, 
behold  the  glorious  ensign  of  the  republic,  now  known  and  honored 
throughout  the  earth,  still  full  high  advanced,  its  arms  and  trophies 
streaming  in  their  original  luster,  not  a  stripe  erased  or  polluted,  nor  a 
single  star  obscured,  bearing  for  its  motto  no  such  miserable  inter 
rogatory  as  'What  is  all  this  worth? '  nor  those  other  words  of  delusion 
and  folly,  'Liberty  first  and  Union  afterwards;'  but  everywhere  spread 
all  over  in  characters  of  living  light  blazing  on  all  its  ample  folds,  as 
they  float  over  the  sea  and  over  the  land,  and  in  every  wind  under 
the  whole  heavens,  that  other  sentiment,  dear  to  every  true  American 
heart,  'Liberty  and  Union,  now  and  forever,  one  and  inseparable! '  " 

When  in  1832  a  tariff  law  was  passed  with  rates  slightly  lower  than 
those  of  1828  but  still  displeasing  to  the  Southerners,  South    gouth  Caro 
Carolina  assumed  the  lead  of  the  dissatisfied  sections  and    Una's  state 
called  a  state  convention  to  consider  the  situation,  convention. 


272  NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 

The  old  military  chieftain  at  the  head  of  the  government  was  not 
the  man  to  tolerate  insubordination  when  it  was  his  sworn  duty  to 
Vigorous  enforce  obedience.  His  toast  at  a  banquet  in  honor  of 
action  by  the  Thomas  Jefferson  was,  "The  Federal  Union,  it  must  be 
preserved;"  and  to  a  certain  partisan  of  states'  rights 
and  nullification  he  threatened  that  he  "  would  hang  him  higher 
than  Haman"  if  he  persisted  in  his  course.  Without  referring  the 
matter  to  Congress,  as  many  a  President  would  have  done,  Jackson 
sent  United  States  troops  to  South  Carolina's  chief  port  at  Charleston 
to  collect  the  duty  at  all  hazards.  He  might  have  called  out  the  state 
militia,  as  Washington  had  done  at  the  time  of  the  whisky  insur 
rection,  but  the  unfortunate  experiences  of  President  Madison  with 
that  branch  of  the  military  service  in  New  England  during  the  War 
of  1812-1815  did  not  recommend  such  a  course. 

In  spite  of  the  presence  of  the  troops  the  convention  of  the  dis 
satisfied  state  came  together,  and  basing  its  action  on  the  theory 
The  Ordi-  °^  states'  rights  of  the  Virginia  and  Kentucky  Resolu- 
nance  of  tions,  the  Hartford  Convention,  and  Calhoun's  "  Expo- 

Nullification.  sition  and  protestj»  gave  to  tnat  theory  a  practical 

demonstration  by  passing  an  Ordinance  of  Nullification.  This  Ordi 
nance,  passed  in  November,  1832,  declared  the  tariff  laws  of  the 
United  States  null  and  void  within  the  limits  of  the  state  of  South 
Carolina,  forbade  the  citizens  of  the  state  to  pay  the  tariff  duties, 
and  threatened  that  the  state  would  secede  from  the  Union  if 
the  national  government  persisted  in  collecting  the  duty.  The 
theory  of  states'  rights  had  received  the  most  complete  expression  it 
was  destined  to  receive  down  to  the  actual  secession  of  the  Southern 
States  in  1860-1861.  It  was  known  that  the  neighboring  Southern 
States  shared  the  sentiments  of  South  Carolina,  though  they  had  not 
taken  the  same  action.  The  President  replied  to  the  ordinance  in  a 
ringing  proclamation,  pointing  out  that  it  was  his  duty  "to  take  care 
that  the  laws  be  faithfully  executed,"  and  warning  the  people  of  South 
Carolina  of  "the  danger  they  will  incur  by  obedience  to  the  illegal  and 
disorganizing  ordinance  of  the  convention."  Congress  backed  up  the 
President  by  the  passage  of  the  Force  Act,  giving  him  unusual  powers 
to  collect  the  duties  in  a  special  customhouse,  even  in  a  floating 
customhouse  on  board  a  ship  in  the  harbor,  if  that  proved  necessary; 
and  on  the  same  day,  in  March,  1833,  under  the  leadership  of  Clay, 
Congress  passed  a  Compromise  Tariff  Act  which  would  gradually 
lower  the  rates.  The  convention  of  the  state  then  repealed  its  Ordinance 
of  Nullification,  but  attempted  to  preserve  a  show  of  spirit  by  adopting 
a  useless  ordinance  nullifying  the  Force  Act. 


JACKSONIAN  DEMOCRACY  273 

The  new  compromise  tariff  provided  for  a  lowering  of  the  rates 
from  year  to  year  down  to  1842,  when  in  comparison  with  the  existing 
rates  of  1833   they  would  be  quite  moderate.     Though    The  c0m- 
the  question  of  states'  rights  was  by  no  means  settled,    promise  of 
each  side  in  the  controversy  claimed  a  victory,  for  while 
the  state  succeeded  in  securing  a  lowering  of  the  duties,  the  President 
and  Congress  prevented  the  actual  refusal  of  any  individual  citizen  of 
South  Carolina  to  pay  the  tariff.    The  reaction  against  a  national  tariff 
had  reached  its  height  and  been  checked,  and  a  valuable  lesson  had  been 
taught  to  sectionalists,  nullificationists,  and  secessionists  as  to  the 
meaning  and  practical  outcome  of  their  doctrines. 

An  important  phase  of  the  episode  was  the  precedent  set  by  the 
President  of  the  United  States  in  favor  of  vigorous  executive  action, 
if  ever  again  a  state  should  assume  to  carry  its  dispute 
with  the  national  government  to  the  point  of  open  dis-    dent  for  vig- 
obedience.     When  this  sad  result  did  come  to  pass  less 
than  thirty  years  later,  the  President  of  that  day  was 
far  less  vigorous  in  defense  of  the  Union,  and  the  people  of  the  loyal 
States  sighed,  "Oh!  for  an  hour  of  Andrew  Jackson!" 

THE  BANK,  INTERNAL  IMPROVEMENTS,  AND  THE  INDIANS 

After  this  vindication  of  the  national  honor  President  Jackson  set 
tled  other  questions  more  to  the  liking  of  the  states'  rights  element. 
The  decision  of  the  Supreme  Court  in  favor  of  the  con-  •  Opposition 
stitutionality  of  the  national  bank  in  the  case  of  McCul-    to  the  na- 
loch  v.  Maryland  did  not  put  an  end  to  the  opposition  of 
the  state  banks.     They  were  jealous  of  the  greater  security  of  the 
larger  institution,  of  its  power  over  the  smaller  banks,  and  of  its 
privilege  of  receiving  the  money  of  the  United  States  on  deposit  and 
lending  it  out  at  interest.     The  great  bank  was  to  them  a  "wicked 
monopoly,"  and  all  sorts   of   illegal  practices,  including   bribery  at 
elections,  were  charged  against  it.      President  Jackson   believed  in 
the  truth  of  the  accusations  and  willingly  used  his  influence  for  its 
destruction. 

In  the  presidential  election  of  1832  the  two  rival  candidates  of  the 
once  dominant  Democratic-Republican  party  were  President  Jackson 
and  Henry   Clay.     The   latter  forced   the   issue   of   the    The  bank 
renewal  of  the  charter  of  the  bank  as  the  leading  ques-    and  the 

..      ,  ,  ,.          ,  .       .  „  .        presidential 

tion    of    the    campaign   by   counseling    his   followers   in    contest  of 

Congress,  who  were  in  a  majority,  to  pass  a  bill  renewing    1832> 

the  charter  four  years  before  its  expiration,  in  order  to  place  Jackson 

in  the  difficult  position  of  signing  or  vetoing  the  bill  on  the  eve  of  the 


274  NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 

presidential  campaign.  Clay  was  of  the  opinion  that  the  President, 
though  outspoken  in  his  opposition  to  the  bank,  would  not  dare  to  veto 
the  bill  for  the  re-charter  through  fear  of  the  political  consequences, 
while  executive  approval  of  the  bill  would  lay  the  President  open  to  the 
charge  of  inconsistency.  True  to  his  stand  Jackson  vetoed  the  bill, 
and  contrary  to  Clay's  expectations  he  was  nevertheless  triumphantly 
reflected.  Seven  electoral  votes  were  cast  for  William  Wirt,  the 
candidate  of  the  Anti-Masonic  party,  organized  in  opposition  to  the 
fraternal  order  of  Masons,  eleven  for  John  Floyd,  an  independent 
candidate,  forty-nine  for  Clay,  and  two  hundred  and  nineteen  for 
Jackson. 

Interpreting  his  success  at  the  polls  as  popular  approval  of  his 
attitude  toward  the  bank,  Jackson  attempted  to  destroy  the  institu- 
Th  . .  tion  entirely,  before  the  expiration  of  its  charter.  He 

drawai  of  ordered  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  to  deposit  no  more 
mint" de^Js-  money  of  the  nation  with  the  hated  monopoly,  but 
its  from  the  rather  in  certain  designated  state  banks,  thereupon  nick 
named  upet  banks."  The  bank  of  the  United  States, 
though  not  at  once  ruined,  dragged  out  a  weak  existence  till  the  expi 
ration  of  its  charter  in  1836,  and  after  that  date  lived  on  a  few  years 
under  a  charter  from  the  state  of  Pennsylvania.  Again  the  states 
were  in  control  of  the  banking  business  of  the  country. 

The  Senate  of  the  United  States  passed  a  vote  of  censure  upon 
Jackson  to  the  effect  "that  the  Presides,  in  the  late  executive  proceed- 
The  Presi-  ings  in  relation  to  the  public  revenue,  has  assumed  upon 
dent  censured.  m'mself  authority  and  power  not  conferred  by  the  Con 
stitution  and  laws,  but  in  derogation  of  both."  The  President  replied 
in  a  dignified  protest,  in  which  he  claimed,  first,  that  he  possessed  full 
power  to  give  orders  to  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  who  was  only 
his  clerk;  and  second,  that  the  only  constitutional  way  for  the  Senate 
to  censure  the  President  was  to  sit  as  a  court  of  impeachment  to  try 
charges  brought  against  him  by  the  House  of  Representatives,  which 
would  give  the  accused  the  opportunity  to  defend  himself,  denied  to 
Jackson  by  the  vote  of  censure.  Three  years  later  the  Senate  ex 
punged  the  resolution  of  censure  from  its  journal. 

When  the  question  of  internal  improvements  at  the  nation's  expense 
came  before  President  Jackson,  he  took  the  stand  that  Jefferson, 
Jackson  and  Madison,  and  Monroe  had  taken  before  him.  In  May, 
the  Maysville  1830,  Congress  sent  to  him  for  approval  a  bill,  called  the 
Maysville  Road  Bill,  authorizing  and  requiring  the  govern 
ment  to  take  stock  in  a  turnpike  road  stretching  from  Maysville,  Ken 
tucky,  on  the  Ohio  River,  to  Lexington,  Kentucky.  The  project  was 


JACKSONIAN  DEMOCRACY  275 

designed  by  Clay,  who  with  Albert  Gallatin  had  taken  the  lead  in 
pushing  the  Cumberland  Road  and  now  proposed  the  new  road  as  the 
first  section  of  an  extension  of  that  thoroughfare  from  the  Ohio  to 
New  Orleans.  The  President  vetoed  the  bill  on  the  ground  that  the 
national  government  could  not  take  such  action  till  an  amendment  was 
added  to  the  Constitution  giving  it  power  in  definite  terms.  In  addi 
tion  to  the  constitutional  objection,  the  President  may  have  been 
moved  to  opposition  by  the  fact  that  it  was  in  Clay's  own  state  that 
the  improvement  was  to  originate;  and  he  may  also  have  foreseen  that 
the  policy  of  expenditure  along  such  Imes  might  serve  as  an  argument 
for  a  protective  tariff,  in  that  the  former  would  relieve  the  embarrass 
ment  of  an  overflowing  treasury  occasioned  by  the  latter. 

Jackson's  position  regarding  the  Maysville  Road  Bill  was  somewhat 
inconsistent  with  his  action  in  signing  other  bills  of  a  similar  nature, 
though  these  were  for  the  improvement  of  rivers  and  other 
harbors  and  not  for  the  construction  of  roads.  He  was  Pr°iects' 
sufficiently  conversant  with  the  needs  of  the  frontier  to  know  that 
improved  means  of  communication  were  imperative,  but  he  advocated 
the  accomplishment  of  this  end  by  the  states  and  was  in  favor  of  dis 
tributing  to  them  the  growing  surplus  in  the  United  States  treasury. 
The  fact  that  a  few  of  the  states  and  certain  private  enterprises  were 
already  successfully  engaged  in  carrying  on  the  desired  improvements 
lent  support  to  the  President's  stand. 

When  Jackson  came  into  office,  the  state  of  Georgia  was  still  engaged 
in  its  struggle  to  remove  the  Creek  and  Cherokee  Indians  from  its 
borders  to  the  regions  west  of  the  Mississippi.     In  con- 
trast    to  .  President    Adams,    who    vainly    attempted    to    Of  the  in- 
defend   the  Indians  against  what  he   considered   unfair    dj&na  from 
treatment,  Jackson,  who  knew  from  experience  how  the 
presence  of  the  Indians  hindered  the  settlement  of  the  country,  upheld 
the  state  at  every  step.     To  assert  its  jurisdiction  over  the  lands  of  the 
Cherokees,  the  courts  of  Georgia  tried  a  Cherokee,  Corn  Tassels  by 
name,  for  murder,  and  found  him  guilty.     Against  the  order  of  the 
Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  the  officials  of  the  state  put  the 
culprit  to  death,  and  the  President  did  not  interfere.     On  another 
occasion  a  certain  missionary  was  arrested  and  convicted  by  the  state 
for  entering,  without  state  license,  upon  the  lands  held  by  the  Indians, 
and  was  kept  in  prison  in  defiance  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United 
States.     Again  the  President  refused  to  uphold  the  court.     "John 
Marshall  has  made  his  decision,"  he  is  reported  to  have  said;  "now 
let  him  enforce  it."     Disheartened,  the  Cherokees  at  last  gave  up 
their  lands  to  the  United  States  for  a  stipulated  sum  and  consented  to 


276  NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 

removal  to  Indian  Territory,  which  Jackson  recommended  to  be  set 
aside  for  the  Indian  tribes. 

Though  it  is  one  of  the  duties  of  the  President  to  enforce  the  decisions 

of  the  Supreme  Court  as  the  final  interpretation  of  the  laws  of  the  land, 

Jackson    maintained    that    the    decisions    of    the    court 

President  ,        .     . 

Jackson  and  bound  no  branch  of  the  government  except  the  judicial 
branch;  that  the  Executive,  in  fact,  had  quite  as  much 
right  as  the  court  to  decide  upon  the  constitutionality  of 
laws  and  to  enforce  its  own  views  rather  than  those  of  the  court  when 
there  was  a  conflict  of  opinion.  Daniel  Webster,  in  criticism  of  this 
opinion,  called  the  President's  opinion  "wild"  and  "disorganizing." 
"The  Constitution  declares,"  said  Webster,  "that  every  public  officer, 
in  the  state  governments  as  well  as  in  the  national  governments,  shall 
take  an  oath  to  support  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States.  This 
is  all.  Would  it  not  have  cast  an  air  of  ridicule  upon  the  whole  pro 
vision,  if  the  Constitution  had  gone  on  to  add  the  words,  '  as  he  under 
stands  it'?  What  would  have  come  nearer  a  solemn  farce  than  to 
bind  a  man  by  oath,  and  still  leave  him  to  be  the  interpreter  of  his  own 
obligation?"  Jackson's  attitude  has  been  discredited,  but  he  main 
tained  it  consistently  to  the  end  of  his  presidency. 

Before  Jackson  went  out  of  office  five  of  the  seven  judges  of  the 
Supreme  Court  were  of  his  appointment.  Chief  Justice  Marshall, 
Changes  in  w^°  nac^  ^een  appointed  by  John  Adams  in  1801,  died  in 
the  Supreme  1835,  and  was  succeeded  by  Roger  B.  Taney  of  Maryland. 
As  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  during  the  bank  contro 
versy,  Taney  had  supported  President  Jackson,  and  his  elevation  to 
the  chief  justiceship  was  regarded  as  a  political  reward.  He  ranks 
second  only  to  his  great  predecessor  in  the  profoundness  of  his  legal 
reasoning  and  the  lucidity  and  power  of  his  decisions.  As  recon 
stituted  by  Jackson,  the  nationalizing  influence  of  the  court  was 
temporarily  checked. 

In  two  instances  there  was  open  war  with  the  Indians  in  Jackson's 
time.  The  first  was  with  the  Sacs  and  Foxes  of  the  Northwest.  The 
War  with  savages  of  this  region  first  clashed  with  the  advancing 
the  Sacs  tide  of  white  settlement  in  Ohio,  where  they  were  defeated 

by  General  Wayne  in  1794;  then  farther  west  in  Indiana, 
where  they  were  overcome  by  General  Harrison  in  1811;  and  now  in 
1832  still  farther  west  in  Illinois  and  Wisconsin.  Here  the  usual  fate 
was  meted  out  to  them,  notwithstanding  the  obstinate  stand  of  their 
leader,  Blackhawk.  One  of  the  soldiers  of  the  frontier  militia  of 
Illinois  at  this  time  was  Abraham  Lincoln,  and  one  of  the  United 
States  regulars  was  Jefferson  Davis. 


JACKSONIAN  DEMOCRACY  277 

The  second  Indian  war  of  Jackson's  administration  was  with  the 
Seminoles  of  Florida.    Since  their  conquest  by  Jackson  himself  in  1818, 
these  Indians  had  retreated  far  down  into  the  peninsula;    The  second 
and  in  1835  they  protested  against  removal  to  the  West  in    war  against 
a  war  which  proved  longer  and  more  bitter  than  the  usual 
Indian  outbreaks.     The  conflict  opened  with  a  massacre  of 
over  one  hundred  United  States  soldiers,  and  was  waged  with  great 
bitterness  on  both  sides  for  eight  years.    Hundreds  of  lives  were  lost  and 
over  $30,000,000  expended  in  putting  down  the  uprising.    The  remnants 
of  the  Seminoles  were  at  last  forcibly  removed  beyond  the  Mississippi. 

FOREIGN  AFFAIRS 

It  might  be  supposed  that  the  annexation  of  Louisiana  and  Florida 
by  the  United  States  would  have  put  the  state  of  Mexico  on  the  lookout 
against  any  such  fate  for  her  own  territory.  Perhaps  the 
friendly  Monroe  Doctrine  had  thrown  Mexico  off  her 
guard.  She  refused  cash  offers  for  the  cession  of  Texas, 
when  tendered  to  her  first  by  President  John  Quincy 
Adams  and  later  by  President  Andrew  Jackson.  She  preferred  to 
develop  Texas  under  her  own  flag.  To  this  end,  not  realizing  the 
inevitable  result,  she  freely  invited  the  citizens  of  the  United  States 
to  come  and  live  in  her  northern  province,  offering  them  large  grants 
of  land  at  the  wonderfully  cheap  rate  of  twelve  and  one-half  cents  per 
acre.  The  price  in  the  United  States  after  1820  for  farms  on  the 
public  domain  was  ten  times  as  great.  Hundreds  seized  the  oppor 
tunity,  and  only  after  it  was  too  late  did  the  Mexicans  attempt  to  stem 
the  tide.  It  was  like  the  irresistible  march  of  settlers  across  Ohio, 
Indiana,  and  Illinois,  or  through  Georgia,  Alabama,  and  Mississippi. 

Conflict  with  the  Mexicans  was  an  unavoidable  consequence.     It 
could  not  be  expected  that  citizens  of  the  United  States,  with  Anglo- 
Saxon  blood  in  their  veins  and  with  the  independent  spirit    The  inde_ 
of  frontiersmen,  would  feel  loyalty  to  the  weak  and  shift-    pendence  of 
ing  government  of  Mexico.     Once  settled  in  the  province    Texas- 
of  Texas,  the  immigrants  quarreled  with  the  native  inhabitants,  broke 
into  open  rebellion,  and  on  March  2,  1836,  declared  Texas  a  free  and 
independent  state.     The  Texas  War  of  Independence  opened  with  a 
terrible  massacre  by  the  Mexicans  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  Texans  at 
the  Alamo,  an  old  Spanish  mission  building  in  San  Antonio,  Texas,  and 
closed  with  the  battle  of  San  Jacinto,  in  which  the  insurgents  under 
General  Sam  Houston  won  a  notable  victory  over  President  Santa  Anna 
and  his  Mexican  followers.     Six  hundred  Mexicans  were  killed  in  the 
battle,  two  hundred  injured,  and  Santa  Anna  made  prisoner.    Houston 


278  NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 

was  made  President  of  the  new  Republic  of  Texas,  and  in  spite  of  the 
fact  that  Mexico  still  claimed  Texas  as  her  own,  the  President  and 
Congress  of  the  United  States  recognized  the  independence  of  the 
revolted  state.  After  such  an  unfriendly  act  by  the  United  States, 
the  neighboring  sister  republic  and  the  nations  farther  south  began  to 
question  the  sincerity  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine. 

Although,  not  a  diplomat,  Jackson  scored  a  triumph  in  foreign 
The  opening  dealings  where  other  Presidents  had  failed.  He  was  suc- 
up.of  the  cessful  in  inducing  Great  Britain  at  last  to  do  away  with 
Indies  to  "  the  regulations  which  had  barred  United  States  vessels 
trade.  from  the  trade  of  the  West  Indies  since  the  days  of  the 

Revolution.  The  victory,  however,  .was  largely  a  barren  one,  because 
the  West  Indian  trade,  important  to  New  England  in  colonial  times,  was 
no  longer  so  highly  desirable  as  formerly.  Not  only  was  capital  being 
diverted  from  shipping  into  manufacturing,  but  the  once  coveted  sugar 
and  molasses  were  being  supplied  in  increasing  quantities  from  Loui 
siana.  Moreover,  subsequent  events  in  the  islands  themselves  soon 
diminished  their  commercial  importance,  for  their  labor  system  was 
undermined  by  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  the  British  colonies  in  1833 
and  British  trade  discriminations  in  their  favor  ceased  with  the  adop 
tion  of  free  trade  in  Great  Britain  in  1846-1849,  so  that  the  prosperity 
of  the  once  wealthy  British  West  Indies  was  soon  a  thing  of  the  past. 

ECONOMIC  PROGRESS 

There  had  been  a  slight  financial  panic  in  the  United  States  in  1819, 
after  which  the  country  entered  upon  a  period  of  great  prosperity,  which 
General  lasted  to  the  end  of  Jackson's  presidency.  John  Quincy 

prosperity.  Adams  declared  of -this  prosperity  that  it  was  "as  large 
and  liberal  as  the  indulgence  of  Heaven  has  ever  granted  to  the  im 
perfect  state  of  man  upon  earth."  The  crops  were  bountiful,  especially 
that  of  cotton,  which  increased  in  the  new  Southwest  from  500,000  to 
900,000  bales  annually  in  the  short  period  of  President  Jackson's  second 
term.  The  national  debt  of  $90,000,000  in  1821  was  gradually  reduced, 
till  by  1834  it  was  entirely  discharged  and  a  surplus  was  piling  up  in 
the  treasury.  At  a  loss  to  know  what  to  do  with  the  surplus,  Congress 
finally  distributed  it  among  the  states,  to  be  used  as  they  saw  fit. 
Some  of  the  states  devoted  the  gift  to  the  construction  of  roads  and 
canals,  some  to  the  improvement  of  the  public  school  system,  and  some 
even  divided  it  up  among  individual  citizens.  Population  grew  from 
10,000,000  in  1821  to  12,000,000  in  1830  and  16,0005000  in  1837.  The 
most  amazing  advances  in  population  were  in  the  West,  where 


JACKSONIAN  DEMOCRACY  279 

Michigan,  in  the  same  interval  of  sixteen  years,  increased  her  10,000 
twentyfold,  Ohio  her  600,000  over  twofold,  Indiana  her  150,000  four 
fold,  Illinois  her  60,000  almost  sevenfold,  and  Mississippi  her  80,000 
fourfold.  Iowa  and  Wisconsin,  uninhabited  by  whites  in  1821,  con 
tained,  in  1837,  the  one  43,000  and  the  other  30,000  inhabitants. 

No  single  indication  of  the  wonderful  prosperity  was  more  impres 
sive  than  the  feverish  haste  with  which  the  new  states  constructed 
internal  improvements.     Ohio  in  a  few  years  built  over    Extensive 
five  hundred  miles  of  state  canals,  two  of  them  connecting    internal  im- 
Lake  Erie  and  the  Ohio  River;  Illinois  planned  thirteen    by  the 
hundred   miles   of  state-owned   railroads,   improved   the    states- 
navigation  of  five  of  her  rivers,  and,  in  all,  actually  expended  over 
eight  million  dollars,  till  her  debt  amounted  to  twenty-nine  dollars 
for  every  man,  woman,  and  child  in  the  state.     On  railroads,  canals, 
and  rivers  the  three  states  of  Michigan,  Indiana,  and  Missouri  together 
expended  almost  fifty  million  dollars.    In  all  the  Union,  by  1836,  over 
1200  miles  of  railroads  had  been  constructed.     The  policy  of  the 
national  government  in  refusing  financial  aid  for  these  improvements 
seemed  justified.     In  1820  many  states  had  no  state  debts  whatever 
and  all  the  states  together  in  this  year  owed  but  $12,000,000;  in  1840 
the  sum  total  of  state  debts  was  $200,000,000,  most  of  it  incurred  for 
internal  improvements. 

The  whole  American  people  seemed  bent  on  speculation,  as  is  com 
mon  in  times  of  prosperity;  and  inasmuch  as  the  price  of  public  lands 

was  fixed  by  law  at  $1.25  per  acre  and  did  not  vary,  while 

.  3f   .  i      r          •  T         Speculation, 

all  other  prices  were  on  the  increase,  the  favorite  specula 
tion  was  in  these  lands.  For  the  decade  of  the  twenties  the  annual 
land  sales  averaged  only  slightly  above  $1,000,000;  in  1834  they 
reached  $4,800,000;  in  1835,  $14,700,000;  and  in  1836  $24,000,000. 
During  Jackson's  two  administrations  the  government  deposits  in  the 
state  banks  rose  from  $10,000,000  to  over  $40,000,000.  Such  heavy 
deposits  in  the  "pet  banks"  constituted  an  irresistible  temptation  to 
many  to  go  into  the  banking  business,  in  the  hope  of  being  favored 
with  a  portion  of  the  government's  money.  From  1829  to  1837  the 
number  of  the  state  banks  more  than  doubled,  their  total  capital  went 
ahead  by  leaps  and  bounds,  and  the  number  of  their  paper  notes  in 
circulation  as  money  expanded  from  $48,000,000  to  $149,000,000. 

The  banks  so  suddenly  called  into  existence  were  called  "wildcat" 
banks,  and  their  currency  "wildcat"  currency.    In  the  vaults  of  these 
banks  there  was  practically  no  gold  or  silver  back  of  the    The  "  wild- 
notes  as  security  for  their  redemption;  and  the  people    cat  banks." 
in  their  ordinary  business  transactions  accepted  the  notes   at   their 

19 


280  NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 

face  value  merely  out  of  their  faith  in  the  good  name  of  the  local  bank 
issuing  them  and  because  the  United  States  government  so  accepted 
them  at  the  land  sales  and  in  other  government  transactions.  These 
notes,  thus  abundantly  issued  and  kept  in  constant  circulation,  made 
money  plenty,  so  that  speculators  borrowed  at  the  banks  with  ease 
and  made  their  investments  with  unusual  recklessness.  The  govern 
ment  itself  encouraged  the  "merry-go-round"  of  money.  The  " wild 
cats"  were  taken  in  by  the  government  officials  at  the  land  sales,  were 
by  them  deposited  in  the  "pet  banks,"  which  foaned  them  out  to  the 


CHICAGO  IN  1832 

speculators  again,  who  in  turn  presented  them  again  to  the  government 
at  other  land  sales;  and  so  on  in  a  circle.  A  day  of  reckoning  was 
to  come  in  the  not  distant  future,  which  would  prove  that  no  money 
was  good  that  did  not  have  actual  value  behind  it. 

Material  progress  characterized  city  and  country  alike.  Hundreds 
of  communities  were  reached  by  the  railroad  trains  for  the  first  time, 
Progress  in  and  were  thus  enabled  the  better  to  attract  the  floating 
the  cities.  population  that  was  spreading  in  every  direction.  Real 
estate  values  rose  tremendously  in  a  general  boom.  In  Mobile,  Ala 
bama,  for  example,  the  value  of  real  estate  rose  from  $1,200,000  in  1831 
to  $27,000,000  in  1837.  In  every  section  the  tendency  was  the  same. 
New  public  improvements  spread  from  city  to  city.  Artificial  gas, 
which  was  first  used  for  illuminating  purposes  in  London  in  1814  and 
in  Paris  in  1820,  was  introduced  in  Baltimore  in  1816,  in  Boston  in  1822, 
in  New  York  in  1823,  and  in  Philadelphia  in  1837.  While  in  1790 
•only  four  towns  in  all  the  United  States  had  systems  of  public  water 
works,  in  Jackson's  time  such  systems  were  becoming  common. 


JACKSONIAN  DEMOCRACY  281 

Lowell,  Massachusetts,  may  be  taken  as  typical  of  the  early  factory 
towns  produced  by  the  industrial  revolution  in  the  United  States. 
It  was  incorporated  as  a  town  in  1826.  In  1820,  before  A  typical  fac- 
any  factories  had  been  erected  there,  the  population  was  tory  town- 
about  two  hundred;  factories  began  to  go  up  by  1822,  and  in  1825  the 
population  was  2500,  in  1832  10,000,  in  1836  17,500,  and  in  1844 
25,000.  In  the  year  1836  there  were  nine  cotton  factories  in  the  city, 
with  a  combined  capital  of  $7,000,000,  hiring  7000  operatives,  of 
whom  5500  were  young  women  and  girls.  The  factories  of  Lowell  at 
this  time  were  three  or  four  stories  in  height,  frequently  provided  with 
a  bell  tower  or  cupola,  well  lighted  and  clean,  and  marvelously  unbe- 
grimed  with  smoke.  The  sum  of  $600,000  was  already  invested  in 
canals  and  locks  in  the  immediate  vicinity. 

The  factory  system,  introduced  in  America  at  the  beginning  of  the 
century,  was  well  developed  by  the  time  of  Jackson's  presidency.  The 
motive  power  to  run  the  machinery  was  obtained  almost  The  new  fae- 
entirely  from  the  swift  river  currents.  To  accommodate  tory  system- 
themselves  to  the  new  principles  of  industrial  organization,  the  working 
classes  found  it  necessary  to  lay  aside  the  small  domestic  manufactur 
ing  which  they  had  previously  carried  on  in  their  scattered  and  isolated 
homes,  and  to  gather  themselves  under  a  common  roof,  for  com 
mon  effort.  A  new  system  of  labor  was  evolved,  for  the  concentra 
tion  of  artisans  meant  the  appearance  in  the  community  of  a 
unique  social  class,  possessed  of  its  own  special  needs,  which 
were  different  from  those  of  any  other  class.  The  factory  owners 
soon  realized  the  exigencies  of  the  new  situation,  and  erected  both 
boarding  houses  for  the  accommodation  and  protection  of  the  young 
women  in  their  employ  and  separate  tenements  for  the  married  em 
ployees  and  their  families,  while  at  the  same  time  they  made  gen 
erous  contributions  for  the  support  of  the  schools  and  churches  in  the 
community.  The  employees  were  frequently  paid,  in  whole  or  in  part, 
in  " orders"  on  the  company  store,  where  commodities  for  their  use 
were  on  sale.  A  time-table  of  the  Lowell  mills  for  the  year  1852 
shows  that  in  the  month  of  June  of  that  year  the  first  bell  of  the  fac 
tory  awakened  the  operatives  at  four-thirty  in  the  morning,  a  second 
bell  came  at  four-fifty,  and  the  day's  work  began  by  the  third  bell, 
early  enough  to  allow  of  a  work  period  of  an  hour  or  so  before  breakfast. 
Bells  rang  for  the  beginning  and  the  end  of  the  breakfast  and  dinner 
periods  of  thirty-five  minutes  each,  and  the  evening  bell  to  stop  work 
came  at  seven.  Work,  therefore,  was  long,  ranging  from  twelve  to 
fifteen  hours  per  day. 

These  first  factories  were  comparatively  small,  and  they  disposed 


282  NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 

of  their  products  under  a  system  of  free  and  unrestricted  competition 

_   .  with  one  another,  with  nothing  to  suggest  the  gigantic 

Intimate  re-       ,  .  .     .       °  D0. 

lations  be-        business  corporations  and  the  absence  of  competition  of 


t^le  Present  day.  Moreover  any  one  factory  was  usually 
owned  by  a  single  man  or  a  small  group  of  men,  who  lived 
neaf  the  factory  and  managed  its  affairs  either  in  person  or  through  an 
agent  or  superintendent.  The  relations  between  capital  and  labor,  if 
not  always  satisfactory,  were  on  the  whole  intimate,  and  the  per 
sonal  contact  often  brought  it  about  that  employers  took  thought  for 
the  social  and  moral  welfare  of  the  laborers,  and  the  latter  realized 
that  their  interests  were  bound  up  with  those  of  capital. 

Still  there  were  conflicts  on  some  occasions  between  employers  and 
employees,  a,s  in  the  extraordinary  times  of  Jackson's  administration, 
Labor  when  prices  rose  more  rapidly  than  wages.  In  the  con- 

troubles,  temporary  descriptions  of  the  numerous  strikes  that 

accompanied  the  unrest,  one  reads  of  the  "pickets"  and  "scabs"  that 
figure  in  present-day  strikes,  of  demands  for  higher  wages,  shorter 
hours,  cooperative  enterprises,  and  restriction  of  immigration.  Not 
withstanding  the  welcome  to  immigrants,  which  had  been  the  policy 
of  the  country  from  the  beginning,  organized  labor  now  cried  out  against 
the  new  arrivals  from  Europe,  who  were  filling  the  labor  market  to 
overflowing  and  keeping  down  wages.  Riots  against  the  Irish  immi 
grants,  who  were  coming  in  large  numbers  to  work  on  the  canals  and 
railroads,  were  common  occurrences.  The  first  national  convention 
of  labor  unions  in  the  history  of  the  country  was  held  in  1834. 

Many  new  appliances  were  introduced  in  the  industrial  world  during 
this  progressive  period.  Anthracite  coal  was  first  used  in  1825  to 
New  generate  steam  and  in  1837  to  smelt  iron.  In  1836-1838, 

inventions.  from  the  inventive  genius  of  John  Ericsson,  came  the 
new  screw  propellers  on  steamboats,  and  in  1838,  though  steam  ves 
sels  had  been  in  use  for  some  time  in  the  coasting  trade,  steamships 
began  making  their  first  regular  trips  across  the  Atlantic,  with  the 
successful  voyages  of  the  Sirius  and  the  Great  Western.  The  present 
Cunard  line  was  established  in  1840.  European  friction  matches  came 
into  use,  and  that  forerunner  of  modern  photography,  the  daguerreo 
type.  Between  1840  and  1850  Charles  Goodyear  gave  to  the  world  his 
invention  of  vulcanized  rubber,  Dr.  William  T.  G.  Morton  his  discovery 
of  the  use  of  ether  as  an  anaesthetic,  Elias  Howe  the  sewing  machine, 
Richard  M.  and  Peter  S.  Hoe  the  modern  newspaper  printing  press,  and 
Samuel  F.  B.  Morse  the  perfected  telegraph.  The  manufacture  of  edg^ 
tools,  axes,  hatchets,  chisels,  and  planes  was  begun  in  America  in  1826, 

Other  labor-saving  devices  were  coming  into  use  which  were  des- 


JACKSONIAN  DEMOCRACY 


283 


284  NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 

tined  both  to  revolutionize  farming  and  at  the  same  time  to  build  up 
Improved  manufacturing.  The  revolving  hay-rake,  superseding 
agricultural  the  hand-rake,  dates  from  this  time.  The  first  patent 
for  a  mowing  machine,  to  take  the  place  of  the  old  hand 
scythe,  was  granted  to  William  Manning  of  New  Jersey  in  1831,  and 
the  first  patent  for  a  reaping  machine  was  obtained  by  Obed  Hussey 


THE  ORIGINAL  MCCORMICK  REAPER 

of  Maryland  in  1833.  In  1834  came  Cyrus  H.  McCormick's  reaper, 
which  was. to  prove  as  important  in  the  agricultural  development  of 
the  North  as  Whitney's  cotton  gin  in  the  development  of  the  South. 
New  threshing  machines  did  away  with  former  crude  methods,  the 
first  designs  of  seed  drills  and  cultivators  came  into  use,  and  commer 
cial  fertilizers  for  the  first  time  became  practical.  Iron  plows  were 
fast  driving  out  the  crude  wooden  plows  of  the  earlier  days. 

POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL  REVOLUTION 

The  spirit  of  progress  extended  to  the  political  and  social  ideals  of  the 
time.  The  United  States  as  an  independent  republic  had  now  been  in 

existence  for  fifty  years;  national  customs  were  beginning 
changes  to*  to  crystallize  and  growing  tendencies  to  reach  the  point 
national  of  asserting  themselves.  One  of  the  great  experiments 

of  the  world's  history  is  this  big  democratic  republic  of 
the  United  States  of  America,  so  many  times  larger  than  any  other 
republic  in  the  world's  history.  Could  plain  people,  left  to  themselves 


JACKSONIAN  DEMOCRACY  285 

in  a  frontier  country,  govern  themselves  on  such  a  large  scale?  What 
kind  of  laws  would  they  pass?  Thoughtful  men  and  women  the  world 
over,  especially  in  monarchical  Europe,  where  the  common  people  had 
little  power,  awaited  with  interest  the  answer  of  the  Americans  to 
these  questions.  Few  new  governments  have  attracted  such  world 
wide  attention. 

In  the  political  world  democracy  had  faith  in  its  own  professions  and 
went  on  making  itself  more  and  more  democratic.  When  Thomas 
Jefferson  came  into  the  presidency,  scarcely  one  man  in  New  ideas 
six  could  vote;  men  were  debarred  from  the  suffrage  who  "*  Politics- 
did  not  own  a  certain  amount  of  property  or  pay  a  certain  amount 
of  taxes,  some  even  because  they  were  Jews  or  Roman  Catholics  or 
disbelievers  in  the  Trinity.  Now  in  Jackson's  time  the  theories  of 
Jefferson  were  being  put  into  practical  operation  in  what  was  rapidly 
approaching  universal  manhood  suffrage.  Shortly  before  1830  Massa 
chusetts  and  New  York  abolished  property  and  tax  qualifications  for 
voting,  Maryland  gave  the  suffrage  to  Jews,  and  a  few  radicals  were 
beginning  the  agitation  in  favor  of  the  extension  of  the  suffrage  to 
women.  In  Rhode  Island,  where  the  people  were  still  living  under 
the  narrow  restrictions  of  the  charter  of  1663,  the  movement  for  a 
wider  suffrage  increased  in  intensity  until  it  reached  the  point  of  a  civil 
uprising  in  1842,  known  as  Dorr's  Rebellion,  which  attained  its  end  at 
last,  though  its  leader,  Thomas  W.  Dorr,  was  imprisoned.  Voters 
insisted  on  taking  political  power  into  their  own  hands  more  than 
ever  before.  In  some  states,  where  at  first  the  presidential  electors 
had  been  chosen  by  the  members  of  the  state  legislature,  the  people 
by  1829  were  beginning  to  choose  the  electors  by  popular  vote;  and  in 
other  states,  which  had  allowed  various  officials  to  secure  their  places 
by  appointment,  the  people  began  to  select  the  officials  by  popular  elec 
tion.  To  prevent  the  rise  of  an  "office-holding  aristocracy"  the  prin 
ciple  of  rotation  in  office  was  widely  put  into  operation,  calling  for 
shorter  terms  of  office  and  a  limited  reeligibility.  In  place  of  the 
former  method  of  nominating  party  candidates  for  office  by  the  caucus 
of  the  party  representatives  in  the  membership  of  the  state  legislature, 
there  was  substituted  the  system  of  popular  nomination  of  officials 
by  a  convention  of  delegates,  chosen  for  this  purpose  by  the  rank  and 
file  of  the  party.  The  legislative  caucus  was  secret,  liable  to  corrup 
tion,  and  in  its  practical  operation  it  subjected  the  executive  officials 
whom  it  named  to  the  undue  -influence  of  the  legislators  who  gave 
the  nomination.  In  districts  represented  in  the  legislature  by  the 
members  of  one  party,  the  voters  of  the  opposite  party  had  no  voice 
in  the  selection  of  their  party  candidates.  All  these  difficulties  were 


286  NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 

obviated  by  the  convention  of  delegates  " fresh  from  the  people." 
The  new  system  was  in  existence  in  a  number  of  the  states  when  Jackson 
came  into  office  in  1829,  and  was  applied  to  the  nomination  of  the 
president  for  the  first  time  by  the  Anti-Masonic  party  in  1831. 

Men  were  beginning  to  give  more  attention  to  the  unfortunate,  to 
the  blind,  to  the  deaf  and  dumb,  and  to  the  insane.  Massachusetts 
New  ideas  built  the  first  state  asylum  for  the  blind  in  1833,  and  her 
on  social  example  was  followed  by  four  other  states  before  the 
quesi  year  jg^  an(j  ky  almost  a  score  more  in  the  next  twenty 

years.  The  first  separate  asylum  for  the  deaf  and  dumb  was  established 
in  Connecticut  in  1817,  and  several  more  were  founded  in  the  thirties. 
Although  there  had  been  two  or  three  asylums  for  the  insane  before 
the  War  of  Independence,  the  first  state  asylum  for  this  class  was 
erected  after  the  second  war  with  Great  Britain.  There  were  six  such 
asylums  by  1830,  seven  more  were  founded  in  the  next  decade,  and  by 
1860  in  all  the  states  the  total  was  over  forty.  This  noble  charity 
was  in  large  part  the  result  of  the  labors  of  Miss  Dorothea  L.  Dix, 
who  traveled  thousands  of  miles  from  county  to  county  throughout 
the  Union  in  her  work  of  philanthropy,  inspecting  and  improving  con 
ditions  wherever  she  went. 

The  custom  of  putting  people  in  prison  for  debt  was  disappearing. 
Formerly  thousands  were  put  into  prison  every  year  for  this  one 
Other  social  offense.  In  the  city  of  Boston  the  number  of  victims  for 
reforms.  a  single  year  totalled  over  three  thousand,  two-thirds  of 

whom  were  convicted  for  debts  of  less  than  $20;  and  one-eighth  of  the 
victims  were  women.  In  Providence,  Rhode  Island,  a  widow  was 
imprisoned  for  a  debt  of  sixty-eight  cents. 

A  strong  tide  was  setting  in  against  the  public  execution  of  criminals, 
and  against  capital  punishment  under  any  circumstances.  Lotteries 
to  raise  money  for  public  buildings  and  for  other  purposes  were  coming 
under  condemnation.  Socialism  of  the  modern  type  was  not  without 
its  advocates.  Temperance  reform  was  also  beginning  to  sweep  the 
country,  though  no  state  prohibition  law  was  placed  on  the  statute 
books  till  the  state  of  Maine  took  this  step  under  the  leadership  of 
Neal  Dow  in  1851. 

Education  for  the  masses  gained  ground  rapidly  after  the  Feder 
alists  were  supplanted  by  the  party  of  Jefferson  and  Jackson.  The 
New  ideas  appearance  of  a  distinct  laboring  class  in  the  cities  and 
in  education.  t^e  widening  of  the  suffrage  tended  to  direct  attention 
to  the  importance  of  popular  education.  Leaders  like  Henry  Barnard 
and  Horace  Mann  organized  the  first  state  and  national  teachers' 
associations,  founded  the  first  normal  schools,  and  led  in  the  demand 


JACKSONIAN  DEMOCRACY  287 

for  the  expenditure  of  more  public  money  upon  the  school  system. 
Massachusetts  abolished  tuition  fees  in  her  schools  in  1826,  and  she 
was  followed  slowly  by  other  states.  In  1821  a  public  high  school 
had  appeared  in  Boston,  whence  the  system  spread  throughout  New 
England  and  the  Middle  States.  Colleges  continued  to  multiply 
with  the  growth  of  the  country,  and  in  the  decade  between  1830  and 
1840  sixty-seven  colleges  and  universities  were  founded,  including 
some  of  the  most  prominent  western  institutions  of  the  present  day. 
Business  colleges  and  night  schools  made  their  apperance  in  the  manu 
facturing  centers  of  the  East,  and  here  and  there  Roman  Catholic 
schools  were  springing  up. 

The  colonial  period  and  the  early  years  of  the  republic  produced 
little  literature  that  was  worthy  of  the  name,  but  by  the  middle  of 
the  nineteenth  century  a  brilliant  group  of  American  Literary 
writers  had  appeared, —  Washington  Irving,  James  Feni-  activity- 
more  Cooper,  Nathaniel  Hawthorne,  Edgar  Allan  Poe,  John  Greenleaf 
Whittier,  Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow,  William  H.  Prescott,  George 
Bancroft,  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  William  Cullen  Bryant,  Oliver  Wen 
dell  Holmes,  James  Russell  Lowell,  and  Francis  Parkman.  The  works 
of  these  men  in  prose  and  verse  effectively  answered  Sydney  Smith's 
sneer  of  1820,  "In  the  four  quarters  of  the  globe,  who  reads  an  American 
book?"  Noah  Webster's  epoch-making  unabridged  dictionary  ap 
peared  in  1828,  and  his  famous  spelling  book,  first  published  in  1783, 
when  he  was  twenty-five  years  of  age,  was  now  issued  by  hundreds  of 
thousands.  Modern  journalism  was  taking  its  rise  in  the  newly  estab 
lished  New  York  Herald  of  James  Gordon  Bennett,  the  New  York 
Tribune  of  Horace  Greeley,  and  the  New  York  Sun. 

The  religious  life  of  the  United  States  in  the  first  half  of  the  nine 
teenth  century  was  different  in  many  respects  from  that  of  the  colonies. 
Many  new  sects  sprang  up  and  were  tolerated.     Unitari-    New  sects 
anism  split  off  from  the  prevailing  Congregational  Church    in  the  reii- 
in  New  England  in  1820.     The  Second  Day  Adventists    giousworid- 
reached   a  height  of  great  popularity  in   1843;  when  thousands  of 
people  in  various  sections  of  the  country  awaited  the  second  coming 
of  Christ  and  the  end  of  the  world.     Joseph  Smith's  "The  Book  of 
Mormon,"  destined  to  usher  in  an  entirely  new  religious  cult,  appeared 
in  1830.     Although  Smith  himself  was  murdered  by  a  mob  in  Illinois, 
Mormonism  did  not  die/    Under  a  new  leader,  Brigham  Young,  the 
faithful  withdrew  from  the  inhospitable  borders  of  civilization  and 
betook  themselves  across  the  desert  into  Mexican  territory,  in  what 
Is  now  the  state  of  Utah,  where  they  founded  a  prosperous  colony. 
Within  a  few  'months  after  cheir  arrival,  Mexico  ceded  the  land  to  the 


288 


NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 


United  States  and  the  Mormons  found  themselves  again  within  the 
jurisdiction  of  the  latter  country.  When  Utah  later  became  a  state, 
polygamy,  which  was  formerly  a  practice  of  the  Mormons,  was  aban 
doned  as  a  tenet  of  the  church  as  being  contrary  to  the  laws  of  the 
United  States. 

Stirred  by  the  prevailing  spirit  of  reform,  the  people  of  the  United 
States  were  turning  instinctively  to  more  and  more  democracy,  to  the 
New  ideas  improvement  of  the  conditions  of  life  around  them,  and 
on  slavery.  ^o  ^he  promotion  of  happiness  among  all  classes.  It  was 
in  response  to  this  spirit  of  the  age  as  well  as  to  the  stimulus  given  to 
the  anti-slavery  agitation  by  the  debate  over  the  Missouri  Com 
promise,  that  the  sentiment  arose 
to  a  limited  extent  in  the  North 
ern  States,  which  had  freed  their 
own  slaves,  in  favor  of  forcing  im 
mediate  and  unconditional  eman 
cipation  of  the  blacks  upon  the 
Southern  States,  where  slavery 
still  existed. 

The  abolitionists,  as  those 
were  called  who  took  part  in  this 
radical  movement  against  slav 
ery,  demanded  not  only  the 
freedom  of  the  blacks  but  the 
granting  to  them  of  the  social 
and  political  privileges  of  the 
whites.  They  opposed  compen 
sation  to  the  masters  for  the  loss 
of  the  money  invested  in  the 
WILLIAM  LLOYD  GARRISON  slaves,  and  they  took  no  account 

of  the  sufferings  that  would  result 
to  both  whites  and  blacks  if  their  programme  were  carried  out. 

The  new  ideas  were  urged  with  great  ability  in  a  weekly  paper, 
the  Liberator,  started  in  Boston  in  1831  by  William  Lloyd  Garrison, 
William         then  twenty-four  years  old.     Garrison  had  received  his 
Lloyd  inspiration  from  a  Quaker  preacher,   Benjamin  Lundy, 

on*  who  devoted  his  life  to  the  cause  of  the  blacks,  traveling 
thousands  of  miles  in  the  interests  of  the  cause,  addressing  hundreds 
of  meetings,  and  editing  a  newspaper,  the  Genius  of  Universal  Emanci 
pation.  For  a  short  time  Garrison  helped  Lundy  on  this  paper  in  Bal 
timore,  but  not  finding  it  radical  enough  he  withdrew  and  set  up  his 
own  paper  in  Boston. 


JACKSONIAN  DEMOCRACY  289 

country  is  the  world,  our  countrymen  all  mankind,"  ran  the 
motto  of  the  Liberator ;  while  the  first  editorial  declared,  "Assenting 
to  the  'self-evident  truth'  maintained  in  the  American  Declaration  of 
Independence,  '  that  all  men  are  created  equal  and  endowed  by  their 
Creator  with  certain  inalienable  rights,  among  which  are  life,  liberty 
and  the  pursuit  of  happiness/  I  shall  strenuously  contend  for  the  im 
mediate  enfranchisement  of  our  slave  population.  ...  I  am  in  earnest 
—  I  will  not  equivocate  —  I  will  not  excuse  —  I  will  not  retreat  a 
single  inch  —  AND  i  WILL  BE  HEARD." 

These  ideas  aroused  excitement  both  on  account  of  their  radical 
nature  and  on  account  of  the  vehemence  with  which  they  were  ex 
pressed.     When  the  Northern  States   abolished   slavery    The  old 
during  or   soon  after  the  War  of  the  Revolution,  as  a    ideas  on 
rule  they  took  the  step  gradually,  in  most  cases  remuner 
ated  the  masters  for  their  losses,  and  did  not  insist  on  giving  to  the  freed- 
men  all  the  social  privileges  of  the  whites.    Each  state,  moreover,  took 
the  step  by  itself,  with  little  or  no  interference  from  the  neighboring 
states.     This  was  abolition  of  a  more  moderate  type  than  Garrison's, 
and  it  was  in  harmony  with  these  moderate  principles  that  the  Ameri 
can  Colonization  Society  was  organized  with  the  avowed  purpose  of 
taking  the  freed  blacks  out  of  the  country  into  Africa,  where  the 
demand  for  social  equality  with  the  whites  would  not  arise. 

The  majority  of  people  in  the  North  as  well  as  in  the  South,  even  of 
the  anti-slavery  sympathizers,  adhered  to  the  more  conservative  view, 
and  disapproved  of  the  idea  of  immediate  emancipation, 
the  denial  of  compensation  to  the  owners,  equality  of  whites    the  new  and 

and  blacks,  the  abandonment  of  the  scheme  of  coloniza-    °}d  ideas  on 

.  .  .  slavery, 

tion,  and  the  interference  regarding  the  matter  in  one 

state  by  the  people  of  another.  The  destruction  of  the  prosperity  of 
the  West  Indies,  wrought  by  the  abolition  of  slavery  there,  added  to 
the  force  of  the  conservative  position. 

Shortly  after  the  Liberator  made  its  appearance  a  serious  negro 
insurrection  broke  out  in  southeastern  Virginia  under  the  leadership 
of  a  slave,  one  Nat  Turner,  which  resulted  in  the  murder 
of  nearly  one  hundred  whites  before  it  was  put  down.     The    resentment 
South  was  in  alarm.     "Let  us  alone,"  the  Southerners    *§*»?.?*  ^ 

abolitionists, 
cried:     keep  out  your  Liberators  and  the  other  abolition 

papers  from  our  mails;  it  is  they  that  are  arousing  the  slaves  to  revolt. 
Prevent  the  spread  of  your  abolition  ideas;  put  Garrison  in  prison,  and 
stop  the  publication  of  his  paper."  Rewards,  aggregating  thousands  of 
dollars,  were  offered  by  Southerners  for  the  arrest  of  the  abolition  editor. 
A  large  majority  of  the  northern  people  sympathized  with  these 


2QQ  NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 

demands.  Garrison  was  mobbed  on  the  streets  of  Boston,  abolition 
Northern  meetings  in  New  York  were  broken  up  and  a  negro 
opposition  asylum  burned,  and  in  Connecticut  a  schoolhouse,  into 
on'  which  negro  pupils  were  admitted,  was  destroyed.  Still  the 
abolitionists  were  not  put  down.  Their  local  societies  were  shortly 
numbered  by  the  hundreds;  a  national  organization,  the  American 
Anti-Slavery  Society,  was  established;  and  several  of  their  champions, 
notably  the  venerable  ex-President,  John  Quincy  Adams,  were  elected 
to  Congress.  The  startling  growth  of  the  movement  is  to  be  credited 
not  only  to  the  general  spirit  of  reform  sweeping  over  the  United 
States  and  other  countries,  but  also  in  particular  to  the  ability  and 
persistency  of  its  leader,  William  Lloyd  Garrison. 

The  southern  radicals  made  the  mistake  of  dragging  slavery  into  the 
arena  of  national  politics  on  two  different  issues,  and  the  results  in 
each  case  redounded  to  the  advantage  of  abolitionism, 
slavery  p'eti-  The  first  concerned  freedom  of  speech  in  Congress  itself. 
Corf  ess  Petitions  began  to  pour  in  on  both  houses  of  Congress 
for  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  the  District  of  Columbia, 
for  the  restriction  of  the  interstate  trade  in  slaves,  and  for  kindred 
reforms.  In  the  Senate  Calhoun  called  the  petitions  "a  foul  slander" 
on  the  South;  Wise  of  Virginia  in  the  House  of  Representatives  based 
his  opposition  to  them  on  the  ground  that  "  slavery  is  interwoven 
with  our  very  political  existence."  The  Southerners  insistently  de 
manded  that  the  petitions  be  laid  on  the  table  without  discussion,  but 
ex-President  Adams  pointed  out  that  to  "gag"  the  petitions  in  this 
way  would  be  contrary  to  the  Constitution,  which  stipulates  in  the  first 
amendment  that  Congress  shall  make  no  law  abridging  "the  right  of 
the  people  to  petition  the  government  for  redress  of  grievances."  The 
"gag  rule"  in  this  case  was  nevertheless  adopted.  In  the  daily  pro 
ceedings  in  the  House  of  Representatives  at  the  hour  for  presenting 
petitions,  Adams  would  rise  with  the  words,  "I  hold  in  my  hand  a  re 
quest  from  the  citizens  of  ...  praying  for  the  abolition  of  slavery 
in  ..."  He  would  forthwith  be  declared  out  of  order,  only  to  rise 
again  with  another,  and  to  be  checked  in  the  same  way.  The  cause 
of  freedom  was  strengthened  by  the  attention  thus  dramatically  drawn 
to  slavery,  and  in  1844  the  rule  was  abandoned  by  the  House. 

The  presence  in  the  mails  of  printed  matter  dealing  with  abolition 
was  the  occasion  of  a  second  alignment  of  forces  in  Con- 
gress  on  the  subject  of  slavery.     Postmasters  in   slave 
matter    in       states  were  in  the  habit  of  opening  private  mail  and  re 
taining  all  abolition  matter  found;  the  President,  through 
the  Postmaster  General,  Amos  Kendall,  refused  to  interfere;   and  the 


JACKSONIAN  DEMOCRACY  291 

southern  leaders  felt  emboldened  to  propose  a  law  formally  prohibiting 
the  use  of  the  mails  for  abolitionist  purposes.  Undoubtedly  Congress 
possessed  the  power  to  pass  such  a  law,  just  as  at  the  present  day  it 
exercises  the  same  right  when  it  excludes  from  the  mails  all  circulars 
and  letters  in  the  interests  of  a  known  fraud;  but  public  opinion  against 
the  exclusion  of  the  abolitionist  mail  was  too  strong  and  the  measure 
was  defeated. 

NEW  POLITICAL  PARTIES 

The  Garrisonian  abolitionists,  believing  with  their  leader  that  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States  was  a  "Covenant  with  Death  and 
an  Agreement  with  Hell,"  denounced  that  document  for    The  Liberty 
its   tolerance  of  slavery  and  applauded  when   Garrison    Party- 
burned  a  copy  of  it  in  public.     They  proclaimed  the  motto,  "  No  union 
with  slaveholders,"  refused  to  vote  or  to  hold  office,  or  to  belong  to 
political  parties,  so  that  their  opposition  never  took  political  form. 
In  1840  a  group   of   abolitionists,  mainly  in  the  West,  formed  the 
"  Liberty  party,"  which  was  the  first  political  organization  in   the 
United  States  in  the  interests  of  emancipation. 

Early  in  Jackson's  second  term  the  opponents  of  the  President 
organized  themselves  into  a  new  party,  on  a  platform  demanding  a 
national  bank,  a  protective  tariff,  and  internal  improve-    The  Whigs 
ments  at  the  expense  of  the  nation.     They  took  the  name    and  the 
of  Whigs  because  of  the  popularity  of  the  British  party  of 
this  name,  which  had  opposed  the  Tory  government  of  George  III  at 
the  time  of  the  Revolution.      Clay,  Webster,  and  the  other  Whigs 
accepted  the  doctrine  of  loose  construction  of  the  Constitution  and 
stood   for  the  principle  of   a  strong  central  government.      At  about 
the  same  time  the  followers  of  President  Jackson  took  the  name  of 
Democrats.     The  strife  and  jealousies  of  the  leaders  following  the  era 
of  good  feeling  had  thus  sundered  the  all-triumphant  party  of  the 
Democratic-Republicans  into  two  new  organizations. 

In  their  first  national  campaign,  that  of  1836,  the  Whigs  did  not 
make  a  formal  nomination  for  the  presidency,  but  divided  their  votes 
among  four  candidates,  William  Henry  Harrison  of  In-    The  presi. 
diana,  the  hero  of  Tippecanoe,  Hugh  L.  White  of  Ten-    dential  con- 
nessee,   Daniel  Webster   of   Massachusetts,   and   W.   P. 
Mangum  of  North  Carolina.     At  the  dictation  of  President  Jackson 
the  Democrats  nominated  Vice  President  Martin  Van  Buren,  who  was 
elected  by  a  vote  of   170  in  the  electoral  colleges  to  124  for  his  four 
Whig  opponents  together. 


NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 


THE  PANIC  OF   1837 

A  few  weeks  after  Van  Buren  was  sworn  into  office,  a  terrible 
financial  panic  broke  upon  the  country,  the  deadening  effects  of  which 
The  causes  hung  over  the  nation  to  the  end  of  Van  Buren's  term, 
of  the  panic.  Hundreds  of  banks  and  commercial  houses  and  thousands 
of  business  men  in  every  section  of  the  country,  finding  their  debts 
greater  than  they  could  pay,  went  to  the  wall.  The  mania  for  specula 
tion  was  the  cause  of  the  disaster, 
speculation  in  banks, in  public  lands, 
and  in  city  real  estate,  speculation 
in  everything.  The  risk  of  specu 
lation  on  borrowed  money,  always 
dangerous,  was  especially  danger 
ous  at  this  time,  because  of  the 
" wildcat"  currency.  Two  acts  of 
the  government  itself  pricked  the 
bubble  of  prosperity.  First,  the 
distribution  of  the  surplus  to  the 
states  in  the  summer  of  1836  crip 
pled  many  of  the  banks  by  drawing 
off  from  them  the  government  de 
posits.  Then,  by  a  single  official 
order,  the  confidence  of  the  govern 
ment  in  the  "wildcat"  notes  was 
withdrawn  when  President  Jackson 
issued  the  specie  circular,  directing 
the  officials  of  the  United  States 
to  accept  only  gold  and  silver  in 
payment  for  public  lands.  Following  this  lead,  the  general  public 
withdrew  its  confidence  in  the  notes,  and  the  discredited  money 
ceased  to  circulate;  holders  of  the  notes  sent  them  back  to  the  banks 
in  floods  with  demands  for  their  redemption  in  coin.  In  their  inability 
to  redeem  the  notes,  the  banks  were  forced  to  close  their  doors,  their 
depositors  were  ruined,  and  business  was  paralyzed.  The  crisis  proved 
again  that  paper  money,  in  order  to  be  acceptable  at  its  face  value, 
must  have  actual  value  back  of  it. 

The  cheap  and  fertile  lands  of  the  frontier  suddenly  became  more 
attractive  than  ever  to  the  thousands  of  men  thrown  out  of 
work  in  the  commercial  and  manufacturing  centers  of  the 
East;  indeed  to  many  these  lands  were  their  only  hope,  and 
multitudes  took  up  their  march  to  the  West  in  search  of 
new  homes.  Too  poor  in  many  cases  to  purchase  land  at  even  so  cheap 


MARTIN  VAN  BUREN 


Renewed 
rush  to  the 
western 
frontier. 


JACKSONIAN  DEMOCRACY  293 

a  rate  as  $1.25  per  acre,  the  sufferers  joined  in  an  old  agitation  in  favor 
of  free  farms  on  the  public  domain  for  all  who  would  go  there  and  settle. 
They  presented  their  petition  to  Congress,  praying  that  body  to  pass 
the  legislation  necessary  for  such  a  use  of  the  public  lands.  Congress 
complied  grudgingly,  granting  the  request  at  first  only  to  those  who 
would  go  to  Florida.  For  -another  twenty-five  years  it  clung  to  its 
refusal  to  devote  all  the  public  lands  to  free  homesteads. 

The  old  law,  which  allowed  speculators  to  buy  up  the  public  lands 
in  any  amount  without  requiring  them  to  cultivate  their  claims,  was 
unwisely  left  on  the  statute  books;    but  the  preemption    Public  land 
law  was  passed,  which  guaranteed  to  the  settlers,  who    laws- 
ventured  on  the  public  lands  before  these  were  legally  placed  on  the 
market,  the  first  chance  to  take  up  the  lands  when  they  should  be 
offered  for  sale. 

In  the  West  the  craze  for  internal  improvements  at  the  expense  of 
the  states  came  to  an  abrupt  end.     Several  states  actually  went  into 
bankruptcy.    Ohio  became  so  disgusted  with  her  expendi 
tures  and  losses  that  in  her  new  constitution  of  185 1  she  for-    Of  state  fn-S° 

bade  the  state  "to  contract  any  debt  for  purposes  of  internal    ternal  im~ 

J  ,  ..  provements. 

improvement,'    and  other  states  followed  her   example. 

One  lesson  of  the  crash  was  that  the  United  States  ought  not  to 
deposit  its  money  in  reckless  private  banks.     A  law  was  passed  pro 
viding  for  the  erection  of  a  treasury  building  in  Washing-    The  sub_ 
ton,  with  branches  in  the  larger  cities,  in  which  to  keep    treasury 
the  money  of  the  nation.     This  sub-treasury  system,  the    sys  * 
one  great  measure  of  the  Van  Buren  administration,  was  consistently 
opposed   by  all  friends  of   the  national  bank,  but  it  represents  the 
policy  followed,  with  some  modifications,  by  the  national  government 
at  the  present  time,  although  of  late  the  government  has  again  adopted 
the  custom  of  depositing  a  part  of  its  money  with  the  banks.     This, 
for  various  reasons,  the  United  States  can  now  do  with  more  safety  than 
in  Jackson's  time. 

An  unfortunate  situation  arose  out  of  the  fact  that  European 
capital  was  very  heavily  invested  in  the  United  States;  in  many  parts 
of  the  country  the  construction  of  internal  improvements    Foreign 
had  been  entirely  dependent  on  capital  from  abroad.     The    debts' 
losses  of  the  foreigners   after  the  crash  were  heavy.     Ex-President 
Jackson  estimated  in  1839  that  $200,000,000  were  due  from  states 
and  private  corporations  in  the  United  States  to  creditors  in  Europe. 
When  some  of  the  bankrupt  states  repudiated  their  debts,  it  was 
largely  British  capital  that  suffered.     American  credit  was  shattered 
throughout  the  world,  and  in  the  crisis  the  provisions  of  the  Con- 


294  NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 

stitution  of  the  United  States,  far  from  offering  to  the  foreigners  any 
relief,  added  to  their  difficulties,  for  the  eleventh  amendment  to  the 
Constitution,  in  addition  to  forbidding  to  citizens  of  one  state  the  right 
to  sue  another  state,  laid  the  same  prohibition  on  citizens  of  foreign 
states.  Domestic  and  foreign  investors  alike  could  bring  no  suit 
against  a  repudiating  state  of  the  United  States  to  force  it  to  pay  its 
debts,  and  millions  of  dollars'  worth  of  these  debts  were  never  paid. 

Late  in  1837  an  exciting  event  in  connection  with  foreign  relations 
served  to  distract  the  people's  attention  from  the  financial  situation. 
The  Caro-  A  rebellion  broke  out  in  Canada  against  Great  Britain, 
hue  affair.  an(j  citizens  of  the  United  States  gave  assistance  to  the 
Canadians.  In  putting  down  the  uprising  the  Canadian  authorities 
crossed  the  Niagara  River  to  the  United  States,  where  they  captured  and 
sent  over  Niagara  Falls  the  ship  Caroline,  which  had  been  used  by  the 
rebels  against  them.  One  of  the  crew  was  killed  in  the  encounter.  To 
the  United  States,  which  was  greatly  incensed  at  the  invasion  of  its 
neutral  territory,  Great  Britain  justified  her  act,  just  as  the  United 
States  justified  Jackson's  invasion  of  Spanish  Florida  in  1818,  on  the 
ground  that  one  nation,  in  self-defense,  may  invade  the  territory  of 
another  to  abate  a  nuisance;  but  three  years  later  the  state  of  New 
York,  in  defiance  of  the  protests  of  the  British,  proceeded  to  try  for 
murder  one  McLeod,  a  British  subject  arrested  in  the  state,  who 
boasted  that  he  had  assisted  in  the  destruction  of  the  Caroline.  The 
Federal  government  at  Washington  requested  the  state  to  desist,  but 
New  York  refused.  Fortunately  the  jury  brought  in  a  verdict  of 
acquittal,  and  the  danger  of  a  war  for  redress  by  Great  Britain  was 
averted.  The  insistence  of  a  state  upon  a  course  in  foreign  relations, 
contrary  to  the  will  of  the  Federal  government,  was  cause  for  alarm,  for 
although  by  the  Constitution  the  conduct  of  foreign  affairs  was  placed 
in  the  hands  of  the  United  States,  New  York's  action  showed  that  a  state 
might  do  great  mischief  and  even  bring  on  a  foreign  war,  which  the 
United  States  would  be  powerless  to  avoid. 

The   panic   of    1837  and  the  ensuing  discontent  cast  odium  on 

the  Democratic  policies   of   Jackson  and  Van  Buren  as  responsible 

.         for  the  crisis.    The  Whigs  took  up  the  issue  with  enthusi- 

de^iaiecam-     asm,  elated  at  the  prospect  of  almost  certain  success  in 

184Q11  °f  *ke  next   contest   at   tne  P°HS-      President  Van   Buren 

was  renominated  by  his  party,  and  General  Harrison  was 

the  nominee  of  the  Whigs.     While  the  country  in  desperation  was 

struggling  with  its  losses,   Van  Buren  was  pictured    by  the    Whig 

orators  as  living  in  the  White  House  in  aristocratic  magnificence, 

eating  from  plates  of  gold  and  drinking  choice  wines.     "Tippecanoe 


JACKSONIAN  DEMOCRACY  295 

and  Tyler  too"  was  the  song  of  the  Whigs  as  they  marched  in  great 
processions  to  their  outdoor  campaign  meetings,  or  rallies,  which  now 
for  the  first  time  took  a  prominent  place  as  a  feature  of  American 
political  life.  The  American  people  had  never  before  participated  so 
enthusiastically  in  a  presidential  campaign;  indeed,  under  a  restricted 
suffrage,  they  had  never  before  had  practical  reasons  for  so  doing. 
When  nominated,  Harrison  was  living  in  retirement  on  a  farm  at  North 
Bend,  Indiana,  where  a  part  of  his  house  was  actually  a  log  cabin.  The 
Democrats  sneered  at  his  log  cabin  life,  but  had  the  galling  experience 
of  seeing  their  opponents  proudly  accept  the  gibe,  parade  log  cabins 
on  wheels,  with  coon  skins  nailed  to  the  door,  and  barrels  of  cider 
standing  by,  and  with  such  appeals  land  their  candidate  in  the  White 
House. 

The  Liberty  party,  with  James  G.  Birney  as  its  candidate,  on  a 
platform  which  declared  for  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  all  the  states, 
polled  7000  votes,  mainly  in  the  West.     The  electoral    The  result 
vote  stood  234  for  Harrison  to  60  for  Van  Buren.  at  the  P°US- 

GENERAL  REFERENCES 

McM ASTER,  United  States,  VI;  SUMNER,  Andrew  Jackson;  H.  VON  HOLST,  John 
C.  Calhoun;  ROOSEVELT,  T.  H.  Benton;  E.  M.  SHEPARD,  Martin  Van  Buren;  SCHURZ, 
Henry  Clay,  I,  311-383,  and  II,  1-170;  LODGE,  Daniel  Webster. 

SPECIAL  TOPICS 

1.  THE  SPOILS  SYSTEM.    BASSETT,  Andrew  Jackson,  II,  437-457;  MCMASTER, 
United  States,  V,  519-536;  FISH,  Civil  Service  and  Patronage. 

2.  DANIEL  WEBSTER  AS  AN  ORATOR.    Epochs,  V,  158-160;  LODGE,  Daniel  Webster, 
117-128;  HARDING,  Orations,  212-241. 

3.  THE  INDEPENDENCE   or  TEXAS.     MCMASTER,    United  States,  VI,    250-270; 
E.  D.  ADAMS,  British  Interests  and  Activities  in  Texas;  Old  South  Leaflets,  VI,  130; 
Epochs,   VI,    136-166;   Contemporaries,   III,    637-641;   BRUCE,   Expansion,    78-105; 
SPARKS,  Expansion,  310-323. 

4.  WILLIAM  LLOYD  GARRISON  AND  THE  ABOLITIONISTS.    W.  P.  AND  F.  J.  GAR 
RISON,  William  Lloyd  Garrison;  MCMASTER,  United  States,  VI,  271-298  ;   Old  South 
Leaflets,  IV,   78,   79,  and  81;   Epochs,  VI,  50-76,  and  167-170;    H.  A.  HERBERT, 
Abolition  Crusade  and  its  Consequences;    Contemporaries,  III,  595-614;    HARDING, 
Orations,  258-266. 

5.  ACTUAL  CONDITIONS  OF  SLAVERY.    HART,  Slavery  and  Abolition;  Contemporaries, 
III,  574-636;   RHODES,  United  States,  I,  303-380;   F.  L.  OLMSTED,  Cotton  Kingdom, 
Seaboard  Slave  States,  and  Back  Country;  HARDING,  Orations,  247-257. 

ILLUSTRATIVE  MATERIAL 

A.  BARR,  Remember  the  Alamo;  K.  MUNROE,  With  Crockett  and  Bowie;  L.  LARCOM, 
A  New  England  Girlhood;  E.  EGGLESTON,  Hoosier  Schoolmaster,  and  Circuit  Rider; 
STOWE,  Dred. 
30 


296  NATIONAL  DEVELOPMENT 

SUGGESTIVE  QUESTIONS 

How  did  the  democracy  of  Andrew  Jackson  differ  from  that  of  Thomas  Jefferson? 
State  in  your  own  words  Webster's  argument  against  states'  rights.  Compare  Jack 
son's  use  of  the  soldiers  of  the  regular  army  in  the  nullification  crisis  with  the  use  of 
the  militia  by  Washington  and  Madison.  What  were  the  advantages  and  disadvantages 
of  the  overthrow  of  the  second  bank  of  the  United  States?  In  what  respects  was  the 
attitude  of  capital  toward  labor  in  Jackson's  time  paternal?  Account  for  this  pater 
nalism.  How  do  you  account  for  the  sudden  appearance  and  persistence  of  radical 
abolitionism  in  Jackson's  time  ?  Do  you  condemn  the  abolitionists  ?  Why,  or  why 
not?  How  do  you  account  for  the  sudden  appearance  and  strength  of  the  spoils  sys 
tem  in  national  politics?  What  connection  can  you  point  out  between  the  extension 
of  the  suffrage  and  the  progress  of  popular  education?  How  can  Jackson  be  held 
responsible  for  the  panic  of  1837?  What  were  the  leading  issues  in  current  politics 
before  the  people  in  the  presidential  campaign  of  1832,  1836,  and  1840? 


PART  VI  I 

AN   ERA   OF   TERRITORIAL   EXPANSION   AND 
CONTINUED    SECTIONAL   STRIFE,    1841-1865 

CHAPTER  XX 

THE   MEXICAN  ANNEXATIONS   AND   OTHER   PHASES   OF 

EXPANSION 

DISSENSIONS   IN  THE   WHIG   PARTY 

THE  Whig  triumph  in  the  election  of  General  Harrison  was  short 
lived.     One  month  after  his  inauguration  the  new  President  died,  and 
Vice  President  Tyler  succeeded  to  the  office  of  President.    The  succes- 
Tyler  had  been  chosen  as  Harrison's  running  mate,  not    present06 
as  an  out-and-out  Whig,  but   as   a  Democrat  who  was    Tyler  to 
opposed  to  Jackson  and  who  might  attract  the  vote  of    Juarrefin  the 
the   dissatisfied   element   of  his   party.     With   a   strong    Whig  party, 
majority  in  both  houses  of  Congress  and  with  a  President  of  their 
choice  in  the  White  House,  the  Whigs  confidently  passed  a  bill  rees 
tablishing  the  old  national  bank,  which  Jackson  had  swept  out  of 
existence;  but  in  one  of  the  most  faithless  acts  in  American  politics 
President  Tyler  wrote  "veto"  upon  the  bill.     Hoping  still  to  meet 
the  President's  approval,  Congress  passed  the  act  in  an  amended  form, 
and  again  "veto"  was  written  upon  it. 

The  incensed  Whigs  "read  Tyler  out  of  the  party"  and  sought  his 
undoing  at  every  turn.  Every  member  of  the  cabinet  but  one  resigned. 
The  Democrats,  though  highly  pleased  at  the  turn  of  The  helpless- 
affairs,  could  not  receive  the  President  into  their  party,  nessofPresi- 
and  so  "poor  Tyler"  struggled  on  to  the  end  of  his  term  dentTylen 
with  no  party  behind  him,  unable  to  form  a  party  of  his  own  and  power 
less  to  bring  about  any  important  legislation.  The  Whigs  were 
partially  satisfied  when  the  President  signed  their  bill  destroying  the 
independent  sub-treasury  system  set  up  in  the  previous  administration. 

Tyler  and  the  Whigs  also  quarreled  over  the  tariff.     In  accordance 
with  the  Compromise  Tariff  Act  of  1833,  the  rates  of  tariff    The  tariff  of 
were  to  be  gradually  lowered  till  1842,  when  there  would    1842- 
be  a  uniform  rate  of  twenty  per  cent.     The  Whigs  now  renounced 
this  agreement  and  tried  to  force  Tyler  to  sign  a  bill  bringing  back 

297 


298      TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND  SECTIONAL  STRIFE 

high  rates.  After  two  vetoes  the  President  signed  the  act  of  1842,  by 
which  the  rates  were  materially  increased. 

The  one  Whig  left  in  Tyler's  cabinet  after  his  alienation  of  the  party 
was  the  Secretary  of  State,  Daniel  Webster,  who  was  engaged  in  ne- 
The  Webster-  g°tiating  with  Lord  Ashburton  an  important  treaty  with 
Ashburton  Great  Britain,  which  was  later  ratified  by  the  Senate  of  the 
United  States.  In  this  treaty  three  important  points  were 
settled.  First,  the  present  boundary  line  between  Maine  and  the  Do 
minion  of  Canada  and  the  present  northern  line  extending  west  from 
the  Connecticut  River  to  the  St.  Lawrence  and  from  Lake  Huron  to 
the  Lake  of  the  Woods  were  agreed  upon.  Second,  the  two  nations 
bound  themselves  to  cooperate  in  putting  down  the  foreign  slave  trade 
on  the  coast  of  Africa.  Third,  agreements  were  made  for  the  mutual 
giving  up  of  fugitives  from  justice  in  certain  cases. 

THE  ANNEXATION  OF  TEXAS  AND  THE  OCCUPATION   OF  OREGON 

President  Jackson,  when  his  fellow-Americans  in  northern  Mexico 
seized  the  province  of  Texas  and  set  it  up  as  an  independent  state, 
Growth  of  officially  recognized  the  independence  of  Texas,  but 
sentiment  in  there  he  stopped,  and  to  the  insistent  demands  of  many 
annexation6  that  the  new  state  be  annexed  to  the  United  States  he 
of  Texas.  gave  a  firm  refusal.  It  was  not  because  he  was  opposed 
to  the  annexation  of  territory;  but  Texan  complications  with  Mexico 
were  too  recent  to  admit  of  uniting  the  new  republic  with  the  United 
States  without  danger  of  trouble  with  Mexico,  which  refused  to  give 
up  her  claims.  Van  Buren  took  the  same  position,  but  President 
Tyler,  under  the  political  necessity  of  finding  some  means  of  winning 
popular  support  in  his  struggle  with  the  Whigs,  readily  grasped  at  the 
plan  of  making  a  state  of  the  Union  out  of  Texas. 

Tyler's  first  Secretary  of  State,  Daniel  Webster,  was  at  the  time  a 
strong  anti-slavery  man  who  had  put  himself  on  record  in  public  as 
The  position  opposed  to  the  annexation  of  Texas,  but  as  soon  as  the 
of  Tyler's  negotiations  with  Great  Britain  over  the  Ashburton 
refaries^of  treaty  were  concluded,  Webster  retired  from  his  post 
State.  an(j  was  succeeded  by  Upshur.  The  new  Secretary  gave 

himself  with  ardor  to  the  promotion  of  the  cause  of  annexation, 
but  he  was  killed  on  board  a  man-of-war  by  the  explosion  of  a  gun, 
when  he  had  been  in  office  hardly  a  year.  His  successor  was  slavery's 
great  champion,  John  C.  Calhoun.  Both  Upshur  and  Calhoun,  to 
further  annexation,  skillfully  used  the  fact  of  heavy  British  invest 
ments  in  Texas,  charging  that  Great  Britain  through  these  means  was 
intriguing  to  bring  about  the  abolition  of  slavery  there  and  possibly 
the  formation  of  a  British  protectorate. 


MEXICAN  ANNEXATIONS  AND  PHASES  OF  EXPANSION  299 

Calhoun  secured  the  consent  of  the  Texans  to  a  treaty  of  annexa 
tion  to  the  United  States,  under  the  promise  that  the  United  States 
would  give  to  them  the  protection  of  its  army  and  navy  in  the  interval 
between  the  negotiation  and  the  ratification  of  the  treaty. 

In  his  message  transmitting  the  treaty  to  the  Senate  President 
Tyler  summed  up  his  views  on  Texas  in  the  following  words:  " There 
exists  no  civilized  government  on  earth,  having  a  volun-  president 
tary  tender  made  it  of  a  domain  so  rich  and  fertile,  so  Tyler's  views, 
replete  with  all  that  can  add  to  national  greatness  and  wealth,  and 
so  necessary  to  its  peace  and  safety,  that  would  reject  the  offer." 

William  Ellery  Channing,  a  New  England  divine,  well  expressed  the 
anti-slavery  point  of  view  in  regard  to  Texas.  "By  this  act  slavery 
will  be  opened  over  regions  to  which  it  is  now  impossible 
to  set  limits.  .  .  .  We  know  that  the  tropical  regions  slavery  posi- 
have  been  found  most  propitious  to  this  pestilence;  nor 
can  we  promise  that  its  expulsion  from  them  for  a  season 
forbids  its  return.  ...  By  this  act  slavery  will  be  perpetuated  in 
the  old  states  as  well  as  spread  over  new.  It  is  well  known  that  the  soil 
of  some  of  the  old  states  has  become  exhausted  by  slave  cultivation. 
Their  neighborhood  to  communities  which  are  flourishing  under  free 
labor,  forces  on  them  perpetual  arguments  for  adopting  this  better 
system.  They  now  adhere  to  slavery,  not  on  account  of  the  wealth 
which  it  extracts  from  the  soil,  but  because  it  furnishes  men  and  women 
to  be  sold  in  newly  settled  and  more  southern  districts.  It  is  by  slave 
breeding  and  slave  selling  that  these  states  subsist.  Take  away  from 
them  a  foreign  market,  and  slavery  would  die.  Of  consequence,  by 
opening  a  new  market,  it  is  prolonged  and  invigorated.  .  .  .  As  I  have 
before  intimated,  and  it  cannot  be  too  often  repeated,  we  shall  not  only 
quicken  the  domestic  slave  trade;  we  shall  give  a  new  impulse  to  the  for 
eign.  ...  I  ask,  whether,  as  a  people,  we  can  stand  forth  in  the  sight 
of  God,  in  the  sight  of  the  nations,  and  adopt  this  atrocious  policy?  " 

To  the  surprise  of  all,  the  Senate  of  the  United  States,  usually 
friendly  to  projects  of  annexation,  rejected  the  treaty  by  a  decisive 
vote,  probably  because    even    the  southern  Democrats,    Rejectjon  Of 
who  naturally  desired  the  annexation,  were  not  willing    the  annexa- 
to  bolster  up  the  waning  political  fortunes  of  President    1 
Tyler  by  indorsing  his  pet  measure.     The  action  was  a  heavy  blow 
to  the  hopes  of  the  South,  for  the  rivalry  between  the  North  and 
the  South  for  new  free  states  on  the  one  hand  and  for  new  slave  states 
on  the  other,  still  continued.     Free  Michigan  had  been  admitted  to 
offset  the  slave  state  of  Arkansas,  and  free  Iowa   as  an   offset  to 
Florida.     Out  of  Texas  several  slave  states  might  be  carved. 


300     TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND  SECTIONAL  STRIFE 

While  the  question  of  Texas  was  agitating  the  country  anxious 
eyes  were  turned  to  the  northwestern  country  of  Oregon.     The  United 

States  based  its  claim  to  this  region,  first,  on  the  discovery 
The  claims  <•    ,       ^   i        T-TT          L      ^      ?  •    Vi-          •  i 

of  the  United    of  the  Columbia  River  by  Captain  Gray  in  1792;  second, 

Oregon*0          on  t^ie  expl°rati°n  °f  tne  country  by  Lewis  and  Clark, 

1804-1806;   third,   on   the   existence   of   the   fur   trading 

post  established  on  the  Columbia  River  at  Astoria  by  John  Jacob 


ASTORIA  IN  1813 
From  Franchere's  Narrative  of  a  Voyage  to  the  Northwest  Coast  of  America. 

Astor  in  1811;  fourth,  on  the  treaty  with  Spain  in  1819,  which  trans 
ferred  to  the  United  States  all  possible  Spanish  claims  to  the  region; 
and  fifth,  on  actual  possession. 

At  the  same  time  the  British  were  advancing  claims  to  Oregon, 
based  on  the  exploration  of  the  Pacific  coast  in  these  parts  by  Sir 
The  British  Francis  Drake  in  1579  and  by  Captain  Cook  in  1778, 
claims  to  on  the  voyage  of  Vancouver  along  the  same  coasts  in 
1792,  on  the  overland  voyage  of  Sir  Alexander  Mackenzie 


Oregon. 


through  Canada  to  the  Pacific,  which  he  reached  in  1793,  and  on  the 
slight  possession  of  the  country  by  the  outposts  of  the  Hudson  Bay 
Company.  In  1818  the  United  States  and  Great  Britain  agreed  to  a 
joint  occupation  of  Oregon  for  ten  years,  which  was  extended  indefinitely 
in  1827,  with  the  right  reserved  to  either  party  to  terminate  the  agree 
ment  at  a  year's  notice. 


MEXICAN  ANNEXATIONS  AND   PHASES  OF  EXPANSION   301 

During  the  progressive  era  of  Jackson  missionaries  from  the  Eastern 
States  reached  the  banks  of  the  Columbia  to  teach  Christianity  to  the 
native  Indian  tribes,  and  following  slowly  in  their  track    overland 
came  bands  of  settlers  whom  the  hard  times  after  the    immigration 
panic  of  1837  were  sending  all  over  the  West  in  search  of 
homes.     A  handful  went  to  Oregon  from  the  Atlantic  states  in  1842, 
and  over  one  thousand  in 
1843.    One  of  the  leaders 
in  Oregon  in  these  early 
days    was    Dr.    Marcus 
Whitman,    a    missionary 
of  the  American  Board  of 
Commissioners    for    For 
eign    Missions,    who    ar 
rived  there  in  1836.    He 
labored  with  singular  de 
votion  for  the  welfare  of 
the  natives;  in  184 2,  in  the 
interests  of  his  mission  he 
made  a  famous  journey, 
single-handed,  across  the 
continent  to  Washington 
and  Boston;  and,  return 
ing,  he  accompanied  the 
immigrants  of  1843  across  THE  QREGON  CQUNTRY 

the  plains  and  mountains 

to  their  haven  in  Walla  Walla.  The  safe  arrival  in  the  coveted 
territory  of  such  a  large  band  strengthened  the  claim  of  the  United 
States  that  the  region  was  theirs  by  right  of  possession,  which  in 
the  sequel  was  to  prove  "nine  points  of  the  law." 

While  the  Senate  of  the  United  States  was  wrestling  over  the  Texas 
treaty  and  while  Oregon  was  filling  up  with  settlers,  the  presidential 
campaign  of  1844  came  on.     The  Democrats  in  their  con 
vention  passed  over  ex-President  Van  Buren  after  a  spirited    dential  cam- 
contest  and  selected  as  their  candidate  James  K.  Polk  of    Jgg1  of 
Tennessee,    while  the  Whigs,    without  even   considering 
President  Tyler,  almost  as  a  matter  of  course  named  their  leader, 
Henry  Clay.     As  a  standard-bearer  Polk  was  the  first  "dark  horse" 
in  national  politics,  that  is,  the  first  candidate  nominated  without 
previous  general  discussion  of  his  name.     Clay,  on  the  other  hand, 
a  leader  in  the  political  life  of   the  nation  for  over  thirty  years, 
had  already  been  a  candidate  for  the  presidency  in  two  exciting  con- 


•%»  SU  ^^^m-fcF^^^fV/  '  .'.A'   BOUNDARYJOFU..8.. 

8"  Ue  f^^.B^^rr\^^^^  ^ 


•••:-':^::r-:^-:---:i^>^^R^-:----:^:---:-\ 


WILLIAMS   ENS. 


302      TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND   SECTIONAL  STRIFE 

tests.  "Who  is  James  K.  Polk?"  rose  the  campaign  shout  of  the 
Whigs;  "We  will  return  James  K.  Polk  to  the  convention  that 
discovered  him." 


%1 


THE  TRAILS  TO  OREGON  AND  CALIFORNIA 


the 
campaign. 


Natural  as  it  was  to  compare  the  two  candidates,  a  campaign  of 
personalities  was  impossible  in  face  of  the  more  important  question  of 

territorial   expansion.     Polk   stood   on   a   platform   that 
Territorial  „     -     ..        ,,   ,  .  ..  ,_ 

expansion  in  called  lor  the  reannexation  or  lexas  and  the  reoccu- 
pation  of  Oregon"  —  Texas  for  the  South  and  Oregon  for 
the  North.  This  was  a  bold  call  to  expansion,  a  reminder 
that  Texas  had  been  claimed  once  before  by  the  United  States  as  a 
part  of  Louisiana  but  had  been  relinquished  in  the  treaty  with  Spain 
in  1819,  and  a  suggestion  that  Oregon  belonged  to  the  United  States 
by  right  of  settlement  and  occupation. 

The  unexpected  rejection  by  the  national  Senate  of  President  Tyler's 
Texas  treaty  within  one  week  after  the  adjournment  of  the  Democratic 
convention  that  called  for  the  annexation  of  Texas,  served 
to  draw  particular  attention  to  this  question  as  the 
leading  issue.  Clay  started  out  as  an  opponent  of  annexation,  and 
then  laid  himself  open  to  the  charge  of  being  a  political  trimmer  by  a 


Texas. 


MEXICAN  ANNEXATIONS  AND  PHASES  OF  EXPANSION   303 

sudden  shifting  of  position  in  the  midst  of  the  campaign.  In  an  evil 
moment  he  penned  the  following  words,  which  were  seized  upon  by 
the  Democrats  as  ammunition  against  him.  "I  have,  however,  no 
hesitation  in  saying  that,  far  from  having  any  personal  objection  to  the 
annexation  of  Texas,  I  should  be  glad  to  see  it,  without  dishonor, 
without  war,  with  the  common  consent  of  the  Union,  and  upon  just 
and  fair  terms.  I  do  not  think  that  the  subject  of  slavery  ought  to 
affect  the  question  one  way  or  the  other." 

On  election  day  Polk  received  a  popular  vote  of  1,337,000  to 
1,299,000  for  Clay,  and  62,000  for  Birney,  the  candidate  of  the  Liberty 
party;  the  electoral  vote  stood  170  for  Polk  to  105  for  Th  . 
Clay.  It  was  generally  agreed  that  the  "I  should  be 
glad  to  see  it"  letter,  which  he  thought  would  help  him  in  the  pro- 
slavery  South,  lost  Clay  enough  anti-slavery  support  in  the  North  to 
cost  him  the  41  electoral  votes  of  the  close  states  of  New  York  and 
Michigan;  but  it  can  hardly  be  said  that  this  determined  the  election, 
for  the  same  letter  also  doubtless  won  for  Clay  the  13  votes  of  Ten 
nessee,  which,  even  with  New  York  and  Michigan  behind  him,  he 
could  not  have  spared. 

Although  he  himself  had  not  been  the  standard-bearer  to  lead  the 
Democrats  to  victory  in  the  contest,  President  Tyler  in-  The  annexa_ 
terpreted  the  result  of  the  election  as  a  vote  of  confidence  tion  of  Texas 
in  his  Texas  policy,  and  he  proceeded  to  work  for  annexa 
tion  with  fresh  zeal  in  the  closing  months  of  his  administration. 
The  Senate's  defeat  of  his  treaty  having  revealed  the  difficulties  in  the 
way  of  securing  a  two-thirds  vote  in  that  body  in  favor  of  annexation, 
the  President  proceeded  on  a  new  tack.  With  his  approval,  the 
friends  of  annexation,  by  a  simple  majority  vote  in  each  house  of 
Congress,  passed  a  joint  resolution,  proposing  to  Texas  annexation 
to  the  United  States.  This  resolution  President  Tyler  signed  March 
i,  1845,  three  days  before  leaving  office,  and  he  had  the  personal  satis 
faction,  while  still  President,  of  dispatching  the  formal  offer  to  the 
Texans.  Texas  accepted  the  invitation  and  was  admitted  into  the 
Union  as  a  state  in  December,  1845,  after  Polk  became  President. 

This  fourth  national  expansion  almost  surely  contained  the  germs 
of  future  strife,  for  Mexico  had  not  only  not  yet  recognized  the  inde 
pendence  of  Texas,  but  in  1843  nad  declared  unequivocally    Dangers 
that  the  passage  of  any  act  of  annexation  by  the  Congress    connected 

r  ,,       TT   .,    jo*         •  ij  i.  -j        j  •  with  the  an- 

of  the  United  States  would  be  considered  equivalent  to  a    nexation  of 

Declaration  of  War.     When  the  resolution  of  annexation    Texas- 
was  passed,  Mexico  immediately  broke  off  diplomatic  relations  with 
the  United  States. 


304      TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND   SECTIONAL  STRIFE 

THE   MEXICAN   WAR   AND    THE   ANNEXATION   OF    CALIFORNIA 
AND    NEW   MEXICO 

President  Polk  frankly  stated  to  a  friend  at  the  outset  of  his  adminis 
tration  that  he  wished  to  signalize  his  administration  by  the  accomplish- 
The  policies  ment  of  four  great  measures,  the  acquisition  of  California, 
of  President  the  settlement  of  the  dispute  with  Great  Britain  over  Ore 
gon,  the  enactment  of  an  Independent  Treasury  Act, 
and  the  readjustment  of  the  tariff.  Each  of  these  four  measures  he 
accomplished. 

During  the  summer  of  his  first  year  in  office  Polk  sent  John  Slidell 

of  Louisiana  on   a  secret  mission  to  Mexico  to  resume  diplomatic 

relations    with    that    country    if    possible.      Claims    for 

The  Slidell          .  .  .  .n.J  *,    .. 

mission  to         indemnity  aggregating  millions  of  dollars  were  held  by 

acquire  citizens    of    the    United    States    against    the    Mexican 

California.  ° 

government,   and   the    President   hoped   that   he   might 

persuade  the  impoverished  state  to  pay  these  in  land.  Slidell  was 
authorized,  if  Mexico  would  give  up  California,  to  assume  the  claims 
and  pay  Mexico  millions  to  boot.  He  was  also  to  attempt  the 
peaceable  settlement  of  the  southern  boundary  of  Texas.  Diplomacy 
failed  to  achieve  its  object,  and  Slidell  was  forced  to  leave  Mexico. 
"Be  assured,"  wrote  the  ambassador  to  his  government  at  home, 
"that  nothing  is  to  be  done  with  these  people  until  they  shall  have 
been  chastised."  Obedient  to  the  hint,  the  President  proceeded  to 
"chastise"  Mexico  for  not  handing  over  to  the  United  States  a 
second  rich  province. 

There  was  uncertainty  as  to  the  precise  limits  of  the  new  state 
of  Texas.  Mexico  claimed  the  Nueces  River  as  the  boundary  line,  but 
War  declared  the  United  States  decided  to  adopt  the  claim  of  Texas 
on  Mexico.  ^a^  her  southern  and  western  boundary  was  the  Rio 
Grande,  a  line  much  farther  to  the  west  and  south  than  the  southern 
and  western  limits  of  the  former  Mexican  state  of  Texas.  Into  the 
disputed  area  between  the  two  rivers  President  Polk,  as  the  com- 
mander-in-chief  of  the  armies  of  the  United  States,  without  notifying 
Congress  of  his  intentions,  ordered  General  Taylor  to  move  with  his 
troops  and  stand  guard.  The  exasperated  Mexicans  crossed  the  Rio 
Grande  and  gave  fight,  and  the  President  sent  a  message  to  Congress 
declaring:  "Mexico  has  passed  the  boundary  of  the  United  States, 
has  invaded  our  territory  and  shed  American  blood  upon  Ameri 
can  soil.  She  has  proclaimed  that  hostilities  have  commenced,  and 
that  the  two  nations  are  now  at  war.  As  war  exists,  and,  notwith 
standing  all  our  efforts  to  avoid  itt  exists  by  the  act  of  Mexico 


MEXICAN  ANNEXATIONS  AND  PHASES  OF  EXPANSION  305 

herself,  we  are  called  upon  by  every  consideration  of  duty  and 
patriotism  to  vindicate  with  decision  the  honor,  the  rights,  and  the 
interests  of  our  country." 


MISSION  SAN  FRANCISCO  DE  LA  ESPADA,  SAN  ANTONIO,  TEXAS 

The  ensuing  war  was  unpopular  with  many  of  the  citizens  of  the 
United  States,  who  felt  that  an  unfair  advantage  was  being  taken  of  a 
weak  neighbor. 

Two  farcical  battles  were  fought  in  May,  1846,  in  the  disputed 
strip  on  the  northern  banks  of  the  Rio  Grande,  at  Palo  Alto  and 
Resaca  de  la  Pajma,  in  which  the  Mexicans  were  defeated.  The  achieve- 
Taylor  then  crossed  the  river,  won  two  more  victories  menteofGen- 
at  Monterey  and  Buena  Vista,  and  returned  to  the  United  eral  Taylor* 
States.  So  far  the  struggle  was  mere  border  warfare,  which  might 


306     TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND  SECTIONAL  STRIFE 

have  continued  indefinitely  without  decisive  results.     It  was  deter 
mined  to  strike  a  blow  at  the  heart  of  Mexico. 

General  Winfield  Scott,  who  had  won  glory  as  a  young  soldier  at 
the  battles  of  Chippewa 
and  Lundy's  Lane  in  the 
General  second  war 

Scott.  with    Great 

Britain  and  was  now 
appointed  commander  of 
the  armies  of  the  United 
States  against  Mexico, 
appeared  on  the  sea  be 
fore  Vera  Cruz  on  the 
Gulf  of  Mexico,  and  land 
ing,  began  a  series  of  vic 
tories  over  a  stretch  of 
two  hundred  miles  inland 
to  Mexico  City,  the  capi 
tal  of  Mexico.  He  took 
the  mountain  pass  of 
Cerro  Gordo,  the  citadel 
of  Cherubusco,  the  castle 
of  Chapultepec,  and  fi 
nally  the  capital  city  it 
self.  The  fall  of  their 
capital,  September  1847, 
but  a  little  more  than  a 
year  after  the  war 
opened,  put  an  end  to  the 
active  resistance  of  the 
Mexicans  and  brought 
the  war  to  a  close. 

In  the  meantime  a 
third  expedition  under 
General  Kearney,  with 

Theoccupa-  the  a^ist- 
tionof  ance  of  Corn- 

California.        m  0  d  0  r  e 

Stockton  of  the  navy 
and  General  Fremont, 
had  taken  California  with  practically  no  resistance. 

By  the  treaty  of  peace,  signed  at  Guadalupe  Hidalgo,  February, 


SCALE  OF  MILES 


50  100 

THE  MEXICAN  WAR 


200 


MEXICAN  ANNEXATIONS  AND  PHASES  OF  EXPANSION  307 


1848,  the  United  States  paid  to  Mexico  $15,000,000  and  in  return 
received  the  undisputed  title  not  only  to  the  disputed  strip  of  land 

between    the 

The  treaty 
of  Guada- 
lupe 
Hidalgo. 


San  Francisco 
t$de  Solano 


iael 

Francisco 
)  fie  Assis 
l|i San  Jose 

»fr  Santa  Clara 
£,Santa  Cruz 
^          .San  Juan 
•  Bautista 
iSan  Carlos 
Borromeo 
'Carmel 

i&Soledad 


Rio  Gr  a  n  d  e 
and  the  Nueces 
but  also  to  Cal 
ifornia,  which  Polk  had 
openly  coveted,  and  to  the 
Mexican  territory  lying  be 
tween  California  on  the  west 
and  Texas  on  the  east, 
which,  with  a  small  area 
secured  later,  known  as  the 
Gads  den  Purchase,  em 
braces  the  present  states 
of  New  Mexico,  Arizona, 
Nevada,  Utah,  and  the 
western  part  of  Colorado. 
Polk  was  urged  to  seize  the 
whole  of  Mexico,  but 
through  fear  of  the  judg 
ment  of  the  people  against 
his  party  at  the  next  presi 
dential  election  he  decided 
not  to  entertain  the  thought 
of  further  aggrandizement. 
Mexico  was  discharged  from 
all  claims  of  American  citi 
zens,  while  the  United 
States  agreed  to  pay  the 
same  to  an  amount  not  ex 
ceeding  $3 , 2  50,000.  The  cost 
of  the  war  itself  in  money 
was  from  $75,000,000  to 
$100,000,000  and  in  human 
life  10,000  men.  This,  the 
nation's  sixth  annexation  of 
foreign  territory,  for  the 
fifth,  as  we  shall  see,  had 

been  peaceably  effected  during  the  progress  of  hostilities  with  Mexico, 

was  the  most  costly  annexation  up  to  that  time. 

Five  years  later,  in  1853,  the  United  States  purchased  from  Mexico 


The 

Missions  and  Chapels 
of 

CALIFORNIA 

ggl  Missions       &  Chapels 


308      TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND  SECTIONAL  STRIFE 

for  $10,000,000  the  additional  strip  of  45,000  square  miles,  in  what  isi 
The  Gadsden  now  the  southern  part  of  Arizona  and  New  Mexico,  called 
Purchase.  the  Gadsden  Purchase,  from  the  name  of  the  commissioner 
who  carried  on  the  negotiations. 

Just  as  President  Jefferson's  war  with  the  African  pirates  had  proved 
a  training  school  for  the  navy  and  was  a  preparation  for  the  second 
The  Mexican  war  w^^  Great  Britain,  this  war  on  the  Mexicans  afforded 
War  a  train-  training  for  many  a  young  soldier  who  was  to  participate  in 
the  coming  Civil  War,  then  not  far  distant.  Among  the 
future  generals  who  now  saw  their  first  service  were  Ulysses  S.  Grant, 
Robert  E.  Lee,  Thomas  J.  (Stonewall)  Jackson,  and  William  T.  Sher 
man.  Just  as  the  War  of  181 2  and  the  Indian  wars  on  the  frontier  called 
forth  two  men  into  military  prominence  and  later  to  the  presidency, 
so  two  generals  of  the  Mexican  War,  Taylor  and  Pierce,  reached  the 
same  goal,  and  another  of  its  leaders,  General  Winfield  Scott,  was 
advanced  on  the  same  road  as  far  as  the  presidential  nomination. 

The  utility  of  the  military  academy  at  West  Point  on  the  Hudson 
The  Naval  having  been  demonstrated,  a  similar  school  for  the  navy 
Academy  at  was  set  up  at  Annapolis,  Maryland,  in  1845,  not>  how 
ever,  in  time  to  produce  naval  leaders  in  the  war 
against  Mexico;  indeed,  naval  leaders  were  little  needed  in  that  war. 

THE   ANNEXATION  OF  OREGON 

In  June,  1846,  one  month  after  the  beginning  of  the  war  with  Mexico, 
the  United  States  accomplished  her  fifth  national  expansion  in  the 
annexation  of  Oregon  by  a  compromise  treaty  with  Great: 
promise  with  Britain,  whose  claims  to  the  country  could  not  be  disre- 
Great  Britain  garded.  The  northern  line  of  the  Oregon  country,  sepa 
rating  it  from  the  Russian  territory  of  Alaska,  had  been; 
fixed  at  54°  40'  north  latitude  by  the  treaty  with  Russia  in  1824,  while 
the  southern  line,  bordering  on  the  Spanish  —  later  Mexican  —  terri 
tory  of  California,  was  fixed  at  42°  by  the  treaty  with  Spain  in  1819. 
The  eastern  line  was  the  Rocky  Mountains.  It  was  difficult  to  agree 
upon  a  division  with  the  British.  The  United  States  at  first  demanded 
the  whole  of  the  Oregon  country,  and  failing  this,  threatened  war. 
"Fifty-four  forty  or  fight"  was  the  slogan  of  the  Democratic  national 
convention  which  had  nominated  Polk  in  1844;  but  to  avert  a  war 
with  Great  Britain  when  his  country  already  had  one  enemy  in  arms 
against  it  on  the  south,  President  Polk  decided  on  concessions.  The 
United  States  gave  up  to  the  British  that  part  of  Oregon  north  of  the 
parallel  of  49°,  the  present  northern  boundary  of  the  United  States,  and 
for  its  share  took  the  southern  part  between  the  parallels  of  49°  and  42*. 


TERRITORIAL,  GROWTH 

OF  THE 
UNITED  STATES 


MEXICAN  ANNEXATIONS  AND   PHASES  OF  EXPANSION   309 

By  the  acquisition  of  Oregon  and  California  an  unbroken  coast  line 
was  secured  for  over  one  thousand  miles  along  the  Pacific.     It  was 
charged  at  the  time  that  the  southern  statesmen  of  Folk's  administra 
tion  played  "fast  and  loose"  with  the  North  over  Oregon,    The  com_ 
in  that,  while  they  insisted  on  a  war  to  get  what  they    promise  a 
wanted  from  Mexico,  they  readily  consented  to  resign  to 
Great  Britain,  without  a  blow,  territory  that  seemed  unfit  for  slavery. 
Yet  that  the  Oregon  question  was  preeminently  one  for  compromise 
has  been  generally  recognized,  for  there  was  justice  in  both  the  British 
and  the  American  claims. 

The  acquisition  of  Texas  in  1845  with  390,000  square  miles,  of  Ore 
gon  in  1846  with  290,000  square  miles,  and  of  the  Mexican  cession  in 
1848  with  520,000  square  miles,  in  three  years  brought  to    Extensive 
the  United  States  1,200,000  square  miles  of  new  territory,    territorial 
This  was  an  area  larger  than  either  the  original  area  of    ac<iuisi 
1783,  which  embraced  850,000  square  miles,  or  the  Louisiana  Purchase  of 
1803,  which  amounted  to  875,000  square  miles.    Florida  had  added  only 
65,000  square  miles.    The  total  area  of  the  United  States  in  1848  after 
the  Mexican  treaty  was  2,970,000  square  miles;  and  when  the  Gadsden 
Purchase  was  added  to  the  area  taken  from  Mexico,  the  outlines  of 
the  present  continuous  territory  of  the  United  States  were  complete. 

THE  NEW  PROBLEMS   OF  THE   PACIFIC 

In  January,  1848,  a  week  or  so  before  the  treaty  of  peace  with  the 
Mexicans,  but  without  the  knowledge  either  of  Mexico  or  of  the  United 
States,  gold  was  discovered  by  James  W.  Marshall  at  The  discov_ 
Sutter's  Mill  in  California,  forty  miles  from  the  present  eryofgoldin 
city  of  Sacramento.  The  news  spread  like  wildfire.  1 
Men  rushed  to  the  diggings  from  every  quarter  of  the  civilized  world, 
but  chiefly  from  the  eastern  part  of  the  United  States.  So  great  was  the 
excitement  that  from  practically  every  town  and  village  of  the  United 
States  gold-seekers  set  out  for  California.  One  hundred  thousand 
people  undertook  the  expedition  in  1849,  some  traveling  in  sailing 
vessels  around  Cape  Horn,  some  struggling  across  the  narrow  Isthmus 
of  Panama  to  ships  on  the  Pacific,  but  the  great  majority  of  them  mak 
ing  their  way  by  wagon  trains  across  the  plains  of  the  United  States. 
These  formed  an  army.  "In  the  day  their  trains  filled  up  the  road  for 
miles,  and  at  night  their  campfires  glittered  in  every  direction  about 
the  places  blessed  by  grass  and  water."  To  thousands  the  path  over 
the  plains  proved  the  path  of  death,  traced  by  the  decaying  carcasses 
of  dead  animals,  by  the  boxes,  barrels,  and  household  goods  thrown 
away  to  lighten  the  load,  and  by  the  hastily  constructed  graves. 


310     TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND  SECTIONAL  STRIFE 


In  twelve  years  over  $500,000,000  worth  of  gold  was  obtained  from 
the  mines,  and  the  little  mission  village  of  San  Francisco  grew  to  be 
a  city  of  56,000  people. 


Ctf 


The  project 
for  an  ocean- 
to-ocean 
canal. 


SUITER'S  MILL 

The  problem  of  how  to  improve  communication  with  the  new 
possessions  pressed  for  immediate  solution.  A  canal  between  the 
Atlantic  and  Pacific  oceans  had  been  the  dream  of  cen 
turies,  from  the  days  of  Balboa  and  Cortes  and  Champlain. 
The  Panama  Congress  of  1826  had  considered  it,  De  Witt 
Clinton,  promoter  of  the  Erie  Canal,  was  interested  in  it, 
and  Presidents  John  Quincy  Adams  and  Andrew  Jackson  had  ordered 
surveys  of  suitable  routes. 

In  1846,  after  the  United  States  had  secured  its  title  to  the  southern 
part  of  the  Oregon  country,  but  before  the  title  to  California  had  been 
acquired,  a  treaty  was  concluded  with  New  Granada 
(now  Colombia)  in  the  northwestern  corner  of  South 
America,  which  gave  to  the  United  States  "the  right  of 
way  or  transit  across  the  Isthmus  of  Panama  upon  any 
modes  of  communication  that  now  exist  or  that  may  be 
hereafter  constructed."  The  "perfect  neutrality"  of  the  isthmus 
and  "the  rights  of  sovereignty  and  property  which  New  Granada  has 
and  possesses  over  the  said  territory"  were  positively  guaranteed  by  the 
United  States.  Private  capital  from  the  United  States  then  set  to 


The  right 
of  way 
across 
Panama. 
The  Panama 
Railroad. 


MEXICAN  ANNEXATIONS  AND  PHASES  OF  EXPANSION  311 

work  to  build  a  railroad  across  the  isthmus.  In  the  fever-stricken 
swamps  of  the  region  the  death  rate  in  the  construction  of  the  road  was 
terrific;  but  seven  years  of  work  sufficed  to  bring  it  to  completion  at  a 
cost  of  $8,000,000,  and  it  was  at  once  a  huge  success  in  lightening 
the  hardships  of  the  Atlantic-Pacific  route  to  California. 


OLD  PRAIRIE  SCHOONER  AND  STAGE  COACH  OF  FIRST  DAYS  IN  THE  WEST 

Photograph  taken  of  two  ancient  relics  of  early  American  pioneer  life.  Origi 
nals  are  at  Sutler's  Fort  in  Sacramento,  California,  which  is  maintained  as  a 
museum  by  the  Native  Sons  and  Daughters  of  the  Golden  West.  The  stage 
coach  is  riddled  with  bullets  through  its  encounters  with  early  outlaws  and  pio 
neer  highwaymen. 

In  almost  every  step  in  the  unfolding  of  the  new  policy  of  terri 
torial  expansion  the  United  States  was  confronted  by  the  active  rivalry 
of  Great  Britain.  This  was  not  true,  to  be  sure,  in  the  The  Clayton_ 
negotiation  of  the  treaty  with  New  Granada  and  in  the  con-  Buiwer 
struction  of  the  Panama  Railroad;  but,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  story  of  the  annexation  of  Texas,  Oregon,  and  California  constantly 
reveals  the  attempts  of  the  British  to  block  the  government  at  Wash 
ington  in  its  efforts  for  national  expansion.  They  were  foiled,  however, 
in  this,  and  hearing  that  the  United  States  had  successfully  concluded 
the  treaty  of  Guadalupe  Hidalgo  with  the  Mexicans,  a  small  British 
fleet,  six  days  after  the  signing  of  that  treaty,  set  out  from  Vera  Cruz, 
on  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  to  the  coast  of  Nicaragua  in  Central  America, 
at  the  mouth  of  the  San  Juan  River,  where  it  was  believed  that  the 
United  States  was  about  to  locate  the  Atlantic  terminus  of  a  Nica- 
raguan  Canal  to  the  Pacific.  With  the  thousand  and  more  miles  of  new 
coast  line  on  the  Pacific  in  her  possession,  the  United  States  viewed  with 

2: 


312      TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND  SECTIONAL  STRIFE 

great  disfavor  the  obstructive  tactics  of  her  rival.  A  delicate  crisis  was 
at  hand,  which,  if  not  handled  wisely,  might  lead  to  war.  The  first 
move  of  the  Washington  authorities  was  the  negotiation  of  two  sepa 
rate  treaties  with  Nicaragua  granting  to  the  United  States  certain 
rights  in  the  construction  of  a  canal  through  that  country.  Armed 
with  the  two  treaties,  the  United  States  confronted  Great  Britain  at 
Nicaragua  and  demanded  that  she  come  to  terms,  else  the  United 
States  would  ratify  one  of  the  Nicaraguan  treaties  and  proceed  alone. 
The  threat  was  successful  and  the  Clayton-Bulwer  treaty  with  Great 
Britain  of  the  year  1850  was  the  result.  It  was  agreed  in  this  treaty, 
though  with  no  mention  of  the  principles  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine 
itself,  first,  that  Great  Britain  on  her  part  would  so  far  recognize  the 
principles  of  that  Doctrine  as  to  promise  that  she  would  never  attempt 
to  plant  a  colony  in  Central  America;  and  second,  that  the  United 
States,  on  her  part,  would  temporarily  waive  the  Doctrine  so  far  as 
to  as-sociate  Great  Britain  with  herself  in  joint  control  of  any  canal 
that  should  be  built  in  Nicaragua.  The  two  nations  were  together  to 
protect  the  projected  waterway,  exercise  supervision  over  its  tolls,  and 
secure  it  from  hostile  attack.  The  agreement  to  a  joint  partnership 
covered  only  a  canal  in  Nicaragua.  For  a  canal  or  a  railroad,  either 
at  Panama  or  Tehuantepec,  if  one  should  be  constructed,  the  United 
States  agreed  with  the  British  that  sometime  in  the  future  the  two 
powers  would  cover  that  subject  in  a  second  treaty  and  that  such  a 
canal  or  railroad  should  be  "  open  to  the  citizens  and  subjects  of  the 
United  States  and  Great  Britain  on  equal  terms." 

It  was  a  highly  hazardous  task  to  undertake  to  enforce  the  Monroe 
Doctrine  in  one  instance  by  allowing  it  to  be  broken  in  another.  Desir 
able  as  it  was  to  force  Great  Britain  to  promise  never  to 
occupy,  fortify,  or  colonize  "Nicaragua,  Costa  Rica,  the 
Buiwer  Mosquito  coast,  or  any  part  of  Central  America  "  and  never 

again  to  assume  or  exercise  "dominion  over  the  same," 
the  promise  to  take  the  rival  nation  into  partnership  in  the  matter  of  a 
Nicaraguan  Canal,  was  without  doubt  contrary  to  the  spirit  of  Presi 
dent  Monroe's  great  principle.  The  Clayton-Bulwer  treaty  has  gen 
erally  been  regarded  as  a  grave  mistake  on  the  part  of  the  United 
States,  which  she  has  tried  at  various  times  since  to  rectify.  It  was 
formally  abrogated  in  1901. 

For  the  protection  of,  any  forthcoming  canal,  terminating  on  the 
Efforts  to  ^u^  °^  Mexico,  the  possession  of  Cuba  was  most  desirable, 
acquire  The  nation's  diplomacy  regarding  Cuba  before  the  time  of 

Cuba.  President  Polk  had  taken  the  form  of  an  effort  to  prevent 

Great  Britain  or  France  from  acquiring  the  island.     Under  the  new 


MEXICAN  ANNEXATIONS   AND   PHASES  OF  EXPANSION    313 

wave  of  expansion  attending  and  following  the  Mexican  War,  the 
demand  arose  that  the  United  States  herself  acquire  "the  pearl  of 
the  Antilles."  In  1849  President  Polk  offered  one  hundred  million 
dollars  to  Spain  for  the  island,  but  the  offer  was  scornfully  rejected. 
Spain  avowed  that  rather  than  part  with  the  colony  to  the  United 
States,  she  would  "prefer  seeing  it  sunk  into  the  ocean."  Active 
efforts  to  acquire  Cuba  continued  for  another  decade. 

As  a  further  means  ot  improving  transportation  facilities  to  Cali 
fornia  and  Oregon,  the  project  of  a  railroad  across  the  plains  and 
mountains  of  the  United  States  to  the  Pacific  rapidly  took    A  J-Q^Q^ 
shape.     It  was  hoped  that  such  a  road  would  enable  gold-    to  the 
seekers  to  make  the  journey  thither  more  easily,  build  up 
trade  between  the  eastern  cities  and  the  Pacific,  give  the  United 
States  a  hold  on  the  trade  of  China  and  other  Asiatic  countries,  anci 
enable  the  government  more  easily  to  send  protecting  armies  westward. 
It  required  over  fifteen  years  of  discussion  to  induce  Congress  to  com 
mit  itself  to  the  step,  for  with  the  Southern  States  demanding  a  South 
ern  Pacific  Railroad  and  the  Northern   States  a  Northern  Pacific 
Railroad,  it  proved  difficult  to  agree  on  a  route. 

Looking  westward  over  the  Pacific  from  California  and  Oregon, 
American  statesmen  were  planning  for  the  further  extension  of  the 
Oriental  trade,  which  had  been  started  so  auspiciously  closer  trade 
by  the  Empress  of  China  in  the  days  of  the  Confedera-  relations 
tion  and  still  flourished,  despite  a  temporary  setback 
during  the  second  war  with  Great  Britain.  Within  a  year  and  a 
half  after  the  declaration  of  peace  in  1815,  forty- two  "India  ships" 
cleared  from  American  ports  for  Asia,  and  in  1821  forty-eight  were  on 
the  seas  from  Salem,  Massachusetts,  alone.  The  country's  oldtime 
supremacy  in  the  commerce  of  the  Atlantic  was  by  this  time  on  the 
decline,  but  in  the  development  of  the  Chinese  trade  of  the  Pacific, 
after  forty  years  of  effort,  American  ships  were  in  the  ascendency 
over  their  British,  Dutch,  and  Portuguese  rivals.  The  chief  prod 
ucts  carried  to  Canton  were  opium,  ginseng,  quicksilver,  lead,  iron, 
copper,  furs,  and  broadcloths;  and  the  chief  products  imported  from 
thence  were  tea,  silk,  camphor,  rhubarb,  sugar,  and  chinaware. 

The  article  of  the  outside  world  most  desired  by  the  Chinese  was 
opium;  but  sensible  of  the  effects  of  this  terrible  drug  on  the  human 
system,  the  government  of  China  finally  put  a  ban  on  the    The  opening 
opium  trade,  confiscated  all  the  opium  stored  within  her    up  of 
territory,  and  forbade  its  further  importation.     From  a 
financial  point   of   view  those   to   suffer   most   from   the   restriction 
were  British  subjects,  who  had  been  in  the  habit  of  exporting  opium 


314     TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND  SECTIONAL  STRIFE 

from  India  to  China  in  large  quantities.  Although  the  war  which 
Great  Britain  waged,  1840-1842,  to  continue  the  unholy  trade  with 
China  was  a  blot  on  British  history,  beneficial  commercial  results  in 
other  respects  followed  both  to  China  and  to  the  rest  of  the  world.  In 
the  treaty  of  peace  terminating  the  war  China  so  far  broke  down  her 
walls  of  exclusion  as  to  open  up  five  of  her  ports  to  British  trade.  The 
next  year  the  United  States  sent  a  large  squadron  to  China  and  secured 
the  same  concessions.  China  as  a  whole,  however,  remained  a  closed 
nation  till  1858,  when  by  treaties  with  Russia,  Great  Britain,  France, 
and  the  United  States,  she  threw  open  a  large  number  of  her  ports 
to  the  trade  of  the  citizens  of  these  countries  and  gave  them  the  right 
of  access  to  her  government,  the  right  to  reside  in  Peking,  to  enjoy  re 
ligious  toleration  and  to  send  diplomatic  representatives  to  China, 
and  certain  other  privileges. 

At  the  same  time  western  civilization  was  knocking  at  the  doors 
of  isolated  Japan.  After  a  special  messenger  to  the  Japanese  Emperor 
The  opening  ^a(^  keen  rePulsed  in  1846,  all  the  world  looked  on  with 
up  of  interest  when  Commodore  Matthew  C.  Perry,  brother  of 

Commodore  Oliver  H.  Perry,  the  hero  of  Lake  Erie, 
sailed  in  1852  to  Japan  at  the  head  of  a  squadron  of  eleven  vessels. 
The  mission  was  one  of  peaceful  persuasion  and  diplomacy,  not  one  of 
war.  Perry  was  a  diplomat  of  rare  powers,  firm,  wise,  dignified,  and 
patient,  and  he  succeeded  in  securing  from  the  Japanese  in  1854  a  treaty 
which  threw  open  two  of  her  ports  to  trade  with  the  United  States. 
Within  a  year  similar  treaties  were  secured  from  Japan  by  Great  Britain, 
Russia,  Holland,  and  other  nations.  Among  the  gifts  of  the  Americans 
to  the  Japanese,  on  the  occasion  of  the  signing  of  the  memorable  Perry 
treaty,  were  rifles,  muskets,  swords,  a  telescope,  two  telegraphic  instru 
ments,  a  locomotive  with  tender,  a  passenger  coach,  railroad  rails,  four 
volumes  of  Audubon's  "  Birds  of  America,"  eight  baskets  of  potatoes, 
and  numerous  agricultural  implements.  The  locomotive  and  tele 
graphic  instruments  were  set  up  on  the  shore  and  operated  by  the  Ameri 
cans,  to  the  great  amazement  of  the  Japanese.  The  Japanese  presented 
the  visitors  with  rice,  three  hundred  chickens,  paper  boxes,  pieces  of 
pongee,  crepe,  and  silk,  twenty  umbrellas,  and  thirteen  dolls.  In  1858 
Japan  was  further  opened  up  to  foreign  trade  by  new  treaties,  first  with 
the  United  States,  and  then  with  Great  Britain,  France,  and  Russia. 
The  Sandwich,  or  Hawaiian  Islands,  discovered  by  the  Englishman, 
Captain  Cook,  in  1778,  assumed  importance  as  a  halfway 
station  in  the  Pacific  as  soon  as  American  ships  began  their 
5dHawaifnCe  triPs  to  Cm'na  and  Japan.  Captain  Gray  in  the  Colum 
bia,  and  the  other  early  merchantmen  from  the  Oregon 


MEXICAN  ANNEXATIONS  AND  PHASES   OF  EXPANSION    315 

country,  and,  after  the  War  of  1812,  hundreds  of  American  whalers  in 
the  North  Pacific,  habitually  stopped  there.  Later  in  the  nineteenth 
century,  on  more  than  one  occasion,  the  United  States  protected  the 
islands  from  seizure  by  European  powers,  and  in  1843,  along  with  Great 
Britain  and  France,  recognized  their  independence.  American  mission 
aries  reached  the  islands  as  early  as  1819,  and  rapidly  transformed  the 
life  arid  customs  of  the  natives. 

Richard  H.  Dana,  who  visited  Hawaii  in  1860,  paid  the  following 
tribute  to  the  labors  of  these  pioneer  Americans.  "It  is  no  small 
thing  to  say  of  the  missionaries  of  the  American  Board  Progress  of 
that  in  less  than  forty  years  they  have  taught  this  whole  Hawau- 
people  to  read  and  write,  to  cipher  and  sew.  They  have  given  them 
an  alphabet,  grammar,  and  dictionary;  preserved  their  language 
from  extinction;  given  it  a  literature,  and  translated  into  it  the  Bible 
and  works  of  devotion,  science,  entertainment,  etc.  They  have 
established  schools,  reared  up  native  teachers,  and  so  pressed  their 
work  that  now  the  proportion  of  inhabitants  who  can  read  and  write 
is  greater  than  in  New  England;  and  whereas  they  found  these  islanders 
a  nation  of  half-naked  savages,  living  in  the  surf  and  on  the  sand,  eating 
raw  fish,  fighting  among  themselves,  tyrannized  over  by  feudal  chiefs, 
and  abandoned  to  sensuality,  they  now  see  them  decently  clothed, 
recognizing  the  laws  of  marriage,  knowing  something  of  accounts, 
going  to  school  and  public  worship  with  more  regularity  than  the 
people  at  home." 

THE   TREASURY   AND    THE   TARIFF 

The  third  part  of  Polk's  programme,  in  addition  to  the  acquisition 
of  California  and  of  Oregon,  was  the  reestablishment  of   the   inde 
pendent  treasury,  first  set  up  by  the  Democrats  under    The  sub_ 
Van  Buren  and   destroyed  by   the  Whigs  under  Tyler,    treasury 
The  Democrats  under  Polk   succeeded  in  restoring  the    syst< 
system,  and  it  remains  to-day  an  essential  feature  of  the  national 
financial  machinery. 

The  fourth  part  of  Polk's  plan  for  his  administration,  the  read 
justment  of  the  tariff,  was  accomplished  by  the  Walker  Tariff  Act  of 
1846,  so-called  because  in   its  enactment  Congress  was    The  Walker 
largely  guided  by  the  advice  of  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,    tariff  of 
Robert    J.  Walker.     Although,  to    secure    his    election, 
Polk  had  led  the  people  of  Pennsylvania,  where  the  iron  and  coal 
interests  demanded  protection,  to  believe  that  he  stood  for  high  tariff 
rates,  he  accepted  the  low  rates  of  the  new  law.     This  tariff  remained 
on  the  statute  books  for  a  period  of  eleven  years. 


3i6      TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND  SECTIONAL  STRIFE 

GENERAL  REFERENCES 

MCMASTER,  United  States,  VII;  SCHURZ,  Henry  Clay,  II,  171-314;  G.  L.  RIVES, 
The  United  States  and  Mexico. 

SPECIAL  TOPICS 

1.  MARCUS  WHITMAN  AND  THE  WINNING  OF  OREGON.    BOURNE,  Essays,  3-109; 
M.  EELLS,  Reply  to  Professor  Bourne;  Epochs,  VII,  10-13,  and  26-35;  H.  H.  BANCROFT, 
Works,  XXIX,  391-424,  446-469,  and  508-554;  BRUCE,  Expansion,  106-135;  SPARKS, 
Expansion,  301-309. 

2.  EXPLORATIONS  OF  JOHN  C.  FREMONT.    Old  South  Leaflets,  II,  45;  GRINNELL, 
Trails,  393-451;  Epochs,  VII,  53-60;  J.  C.  FREMONT,  Memoirs  of  My  Life;  BRUCE, 
Expansion,  136-165. 

3.  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  GOLD  IN  CALIFORNIA.    Epochs,  VII,  88-96;  J.  ROYCE,  Cali 
fornia,  220-246;  The  Argonauts  of  California,  by  a  Pioneer;  Contemporaries,  IV,  42-47; 
H.  H.  BANCROFT,  Works,  XXIII,  1-250;  SPARKS,  Expansion,  336-350. 

4.  THE  OPENING  UP  OF  JAPAN.     C.  O.  PAULLIN,  Diplomatic  Negotiations,  244-281; 
Old  South  Leaflets,  VII,  151;  FOSTER,  American  Diplomacy  in  the  Orient,  133-202. 

ILLUSTRATIVE  MATERIAL 

LOWELL,  Present  Crisis,  and  Biglow  Papers,  First  Series;  G.  ATHERTON,  Splendid 
Idle  Forties;  WHITTIER,  Angels  of  Buena  Vista,  and  Voices  of  Freedom;  HARTE,  Luck  of 
Roaring  Camp;  IRVING,  Astoria;  Ho  WELLS,  A  Boy's  Town;  DICKENS,  Martin  Chuzzlewit, 
and  American  Notes. 

SUGGESTIVE  QUESTIONS 

Would  it  have  been  wise  for  President  Tyler  to  dismiss  the  cabinet  of  ex-President 
Harrison  at  once  and  secure  an  entirely  new  one  of  his  own  appointment?  On  what 
ground  can  you  condemn  President  Tyler's  stand  toward  Whig  measures?  Distinguish 
between  the  remote  and  the  immediate  causes  of  the  Mexican  War.  Was  the  attitude 
of  the  United  States  in  this  war  contrary  to  the  Monroe  Doctrine?  What  was  the 
influence  of  the  discovery  of  gold  in  California  on  the  problems  of  transportation  in 
the  United  States?  Why  has  the  Clayton-Bulwer  treaty  been  called  a  diplomatic 
mistake?  Why  were  the  slave-holding  statesmen  generally  in  favor  of  territorial 
expansion?  Account  for  the  traditional  friendship  of  the  United  States  for  China  and 
Japan.  What  were  the  leading  issues  in  current  politics  before  the  people  in  the 
presidential  campaign  of  1844? 


CHAPTER  XXI 
THE    QUARREL    OVER    SLAVERY    IN    THE    TERRITORIES 

THE   COMPROMISE  OF   1850 

PRESIDENT  FOLK'S  annexation  policy  raised  again  the  question  of 
what  to  do  with  slavery  in  the  territories,  after  the  Missouri  Compro 
mise  had  succeeded  in  keeping  a  degree  of  peace  on  the  sub-  The  WUmot 
ject  for  twenty-five  years.  Texas  was  naturally  admitted  Proviso- 
as  a  slave  state,  since  slavery  existed  within  her  borders  while  she  was 
an  independent  republic.  The  dispute  over  the  question,  as  it  con 
cerned  the  lands  to  be  acquired  from  Mexico,  arose  in  Congress  almost 
as  soon  as  hostilities  had  begun  with  that  country.  David  Wilmot 
precipitated  the  debate  in  1846,  by  proposing  in  the  House  of  Represen 
tatives  to  add  to  a  bill  appropriating  money  to  defray  the  expenses  of 
making  peace  an  amendment  or  proviso,  to  the  effect  that  "neither 
slavery  nor  involuntary  servitude"  should  ever  exist  in  any  part  of  the 
territory  to  be  gained  from  Mexico  by  the  war.  The  proviso  evoked 
wide  public  discussion,  but  although  it  passed  the  House  of  Representa 
tives,  it  failed  in  the  Senate,  where  the  slave  states  were  in  a  majority 
after  the  annexation  of  Texas. 

Another  proposal  for  congressional  action  was  that  Congress  should 
run  the  Missouri  Compromise  line  across  the  Mexican  lands  to  the 
Pacific  and  exclude  slavery  north  of  that  line  in  the  new    Two  other 
territory  as  well  as  in  the  Louisiana  country.     The  prin-    sohTthms  for 
ciple  of  congressional  action  in  any  form  was  rejected  by    the  problem 
Calhoun,  who  contended  that  slavery  must  be  allowed   t^terri-7 " 
to  enter  the  territories  with  the  Constitution,  because    tories- 
slaves  were  property,  and  ownership  of  property  was  guaranteed  to  all 
wherever  the  Constitution  was  in  force.     Congress  could  come  to  no 
decision,  and  in  the  annexation  treaty  with  Mexico  the  question  was 
left  unsettled. 

The  more  northern  country  of  Oregon,  where  slavery  naturally 
would  not  thrive,  was  not  coveted  by  the  pro-slavery  fac-    Oregon  de- 
tion  with  such  ardor  as  were  the  Mexican  lands,  and  after    voted  to 
some  debate  Oregon  was  organized  as  a  territory  in  1848 
with  slavery  excluded. 

317 


3i8      TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND   SECTIONAL  STRIFE 

The  presidential  campaign  of  1848,  which  was  the  second  presidential 
contest  fought  out  on  the  slavery  issue,  served  to  bring  into  prominence 
"Squatter  ^ill  another  proposed  solution  of  the  problem  of  terri- 
sovereignty"  torial  slavery.  The  Democratic  party  placed  at  the 
presidential  head  of  its  ticket  a  "northern  man  with  southern  prin- 
of  ttieaiDemo-  ciPles>"  Lewis  Cass  of  Michigan,  who  had  a  creditable 
cratsin  political  record.  He  had  served  as  the  governor  of  the 

1848>  territory  of  Michigan,  as  Secretary  of  War  under  Jackson, 

and  later  as  minister  to  France.  Casting  aside  not  only  the  principle 
of  congressional  restriction  of  slavery  in  the  territories,  involved 
in  the  Wilmot  Proviso  and  in  the  Missouri  Compromise,  but  also 
Calhoun's  theory  that  slavery  went  into  the  territories  with  the  Con 
stitution,  Cass  led  his  party  in  an  attempt  to  please  both  sides,  by 
favoring  "squatter  sovereignty,"  or  "popular  sovereignty"  on  the  ques 
tion.  By  his  plan  the  people  in  the  territories  were  to  be  allowed  to 
decide  for  themselves  whether  or  not  slavery  should  exist  in  their  midst. 

The  Whigs,  without  a  positive  declaration  on  the  question,  named 
as  their  leader  General  Taylor  of  Louisiana  of  Mexican  War  fame, 
The  Whigs  w^°  may  ^e  characterized  by  way  of  contrast  to  Cass  as  a 
in  the  "southern  man  with  northern  principles."  A  rough 

soldier,  strictly  trained  to  his  profession,  Taylor  knew 
little  of  the  refinements  of  life  or  of  the  principles  and  arts  of  politics. 
He  was  a  slaveholder,  but  he  had  never  manifested  any  interest  in  the 
extension  of  slavery. 

The  Free  Soil  party,  composed  largely  of  the  remnants  of  the  old 
Liberty  party,  inscribed  on  their  banners,  "Free  soil,  free  speech,  free 
The  Free-  labor,  free  men,"  and  indorsed  as  their  candidate  ex- 
soilers.  President  Van  Buren,  who  had  already  been  nominated 

by  the  "Barn-Burners,"  a  dissenting  Democratic  faction  in  New  York. 
The  Free  Soilers  rejected  the  vague  and  compromising  stand  of  the  two 
larger  parties  which  were  endeavoring  to  please  both  sides,  and  openly 
favored  the  principles  of  the  Wilmot  Proviso;  but  they  refused  to  take 
the  radical  stand  of  the  Liberty  party,  which  had  aimed  to  abolish 
slavery  in  the  states  and  territories  alike. 

Taylor  was  elected  by  a  vote  of  163  to  127  in  the 
The  result.  J 

electoral  colleges. 

When  the  first  Congress  of  the  Taylor  administration  came  together 

in  December,  1849,  the  country  was  surprised  to  learn  that 

decision1  California,  with  90,000  settlers,  too  impatient  to  await 

against  organization  as  a  territory  and  waiving  the  formality  of  the 

"enabling  act,"  usually  passed  by  Congress   to  authorize 

a  territory  to  prepare  for  statehood,  had  organized  a  state  govern- 


QUARREL  OVER  SLAVERY  IN  THE  TERRITORIES         319 

ment,  framed  a  constitution,  and  was  applying  to  Congress  for  imme 
diate  statehood.  Taking  no  counsel  of  the  national  lawmakers,  who 
were  struggling  to  find  a  solution  of  the  question  of  territorial  slav 
ery,  California  had  calmly  settled  the  matter,  so  far  as  she  herself 
was  concerned,  by  inserting  in  her  constitution  a  clause  forbidding 
slavery,  The  explanation  of  this  decided  stand  was  not  far  to  seek. 
Rough  mining  camps,  where  sanitary  conditions  were  anything  but 
wholesome,  where  property  rights  were  insecure  and  even  human  life 
unsafe,  were  not  attractive  places  for  the  slaveholders  with  their 
valuable  slave  property;  and  the  long  journey  across  the  continent  was 
so  full  of  perils  that  few  attempted  it  with  their  slaves.  Moreover, 
the  soil  of  California  was  not  suited '  to  cotton-raising,  and  mining 
operations  required  more  skill  than  slaves  possessed.  Consequently 
there  were  too  few  slaveholders  in  California  to  vote  slavery  into  the 
new  constitution. 

The  old  champions,  Calhoun,  Webster,  and  Clay,  came  forward 
and  wrangled  in  Congress  for  the  last  time.     It  was  much  like  the 
debate  on  the  question  of  slavery  in  the  territories  in  1820    The     eat 
over  again,  though  the  new  discussion  referred  to  slavery    debate  in 
in  the  territory  acquired  from  Mexico,  while  that  of  1820      o^688' 
concerned  slavery  in  the  Louisiana  country. 

As  in  the  crises  of  1820  and  of  1832,  a  compromise  was  proposed  to 
please  all  sides  and  save  the  Union.  Henry  Clay,  now  called  "The 
Great  Pacificator,"  was  the  author  of  the  Compromise  Henry 
of  1850.  The  preamble  of  the  resolutions  which  he  Clay's  plan  of 
offered  in  the  Senate  declared  their  purpose  to  be  "  the  comPromise- 
peace,  concord  and  harmony  of  the  Union  of  these  states,  to  settle  and 
adjust  amicably  all  existing  questions  of  controversy  between  them, 
arising  out  of  the  institution  of  slavery,  upon  a  fair,  equitable  and  just 
basis."  Speaking  to  his  fellow-senators,  Clay  said:  " Coming  from  a 
slave  state,  as  I  do,  I  owe  it  to  myself,  I  owe  it  to  truth,  I  owe  it  to  the 
subject,  to  say  that  no  earthly  power  could  induce  me  to  vote  for  a 
specific  measure  for  the  introduction  of  slavery  where  it  had  not  before 
existed.  .  .  .  Sir,  while  you  reproach,  and  justly  too,  our  British 
ancestors  for  the  introduction  of  this  institution  upon  the  continent  of 
America,  I  am,  for  one,  unwilling  that  the  posterity  of  the  present 
inhabitants  of  California  and  New  Mexico  shall  reproach  us  for  doing 
just  what  we  reproach  Great  Britain  for  doing  to  us."  He  asked  his 
southern  friends  to  give  up  their  bitterness,  pointing  out  to  them  that 
their  section  had  made  great  gains  in  the  recent  acquisitions.  He  would 
have  the  North,  on  its  part,  forego  its  efforts  to  forbid  territorial 
slavery.  Referring  to  the  threat  of  the  dissatisfied  Southern  States 


320     TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND   SECTIONAL  STRIFE 

to  secede  from  the  Union,  he  denied  the  right  of  a  state  to  withdraw 
from  the  Union,  and  maintained  that  secession  meant  war.  "  War  and 
dissolution  of  the  Union  are  identical  terms,"  he  exclaimed. 

His  compromise  or  " Omnibus  Bill"  embraced  five  points:  first,  as 
a  concession  to  the  anti-slavery  North,  the  admission  of  California  as  a 
The  "Omni-  free  state;  second,  as  a  concession  to  the  pro-slavery 
bus  Bill."  South,  the  enactment  of  a  strict  fugitive  slave  law,  to 
enable  the  Southerners  the  better  to  catch  their  runaway  slaves  in  the 
North;  third,  the  organization  of  the  eastern  part  of  the  new  posses 
sions  into  two  territories  to  be  known  as  Utah  and  New  Mexico,  each 
somewhat  larger  than  the  present  states  bearing  these  names,  without 
specifically  deciding  the  slavery  question  one  way  or  the  other;  fourth, 
the  prohibition  of  the  slave  trade  in  the  District  of  Columbia;  and 
fifth,  the  payment  to  Texas  of  $10,000,000  for  giving  up  to  the  United 
States  her  claim  to  a  certain  part  of  what  is  now  New  Mexico. 

Too  weak  to  speak  for  himself,  Calhoun  was  carried  into  the  Senate 
Chamber,  where  he  sat  helpless  while  a  colleague  read  his  last  message 
Calhoun  to  tne  American  people.  In  another  month  his  voice 

opposes  _  was  silent  forever.  He  declared  that  the  Union  was  in 
lse*  danger,  and  that  for  this  serious  state  of  affairs  there  were 
two  leading  reasons.  One  of  these  was  the  continued  agitation  of  the 
slavery  question  in  general  on  the  part  of  the  northern  people,  and 
the  other  was  the  aggression  of  the  North  in  proposing  to  disturb  the 
equilibrium  of  the  two  sections  and  make  the  new  territories  free  soil. 
If  she  succeeded  in  her  purpose  of  excluding  slavery  from  the  new 
territories,  three-fourths  of  the  more  than  two  million  square  miles  of 
territory  acquired  by  the  United  States  since  1783  would  be  free. 
"  Unless  something  decisive  is  done,  I  again  ask,  what  is  to  stop  this 
agitation,  before  the  great  and  final  object  at  which  it  aims  —  the 
abolition  of  slavery  in  the  states  —  is  consummated?  Is  it,  then,  not 
certain,  that  if  something  decisive  is  not  now  done  to  arrest  it,  the 
South  will  be  forced  to  choose  between  abolition  and  secession?"  He 
was  opposed  to  all  compromise,  and  demanded  that  the  North  cease 
her  agitation,  return  all  fugitive  slaves,  and  agree  to  open  the  territories 
to  slavery.  This  was  in  general  the  position  of  the  slavery  element  in 
Congress. 

Webster  favored  the  compromise.  Back  in  the  thirties,  when  the 
agitation  over  the  admission  of  Texas  into  the  Union  was  beginning  to 
Webster  disturb  the  peace  of  the  country,  he,  with  many  other 

favors  northern  leaders,  had  denounced  slavery  as  "  a  great  social, 

compromise.  moralj  and  political  evil  »  Now  in  his  famous  Seventh- 

of-March  speech  he  took  the  middle  way.    He  held  that  slavery  was 


QUARREL  OVER  SLAVERY  IN  THE  TERRITORIES         321 

already  excluded  from  California  and  New  Mexico  by  their  very  physi 
cal  characteristics.  "I  would  not  take  pains  to  reaffirm  an  ordinance 
of  Nature,"  he  declared,  "nor  to  reenact  the  will  of  God.  And  I  would 
put  in  no  Wilmot  Proviso,  for  the  purpose  of  a  taunt  or  a  reproach." 
He  defended  the  principle  of  the  Fugitive  Slave  Law  and  denounced 
the  abolitionists,  whose  "operations  for  the  last  twenty  years  have 
produced  nothing  good  or  valuable."  On  the  other  hand,  he  entreated 
the  Southerners  to  dismiss  the  thought  of  secession,  with  its  attending 
indescribable  horrors  of  civil  war.  "Secession!  Peaceable  seces 
sion!  Sir,  your  eyes  and  mine  are  never  destined  to  see  that  miracle. 
The  dismemberment  of  this  vast  country  without  convulsion!  The 
breaking  up  of  the  fountains  of  the  great  deep  without  ruffling  the 
surface!  .  .  .  There  can  be  no  such  thing  as  a  peaceable  secession.  .  .  . 
No,  sir!  no,  sir!  I  will  not  state  what  might  produce  the  disruption 
of  the  states;  but,  sir,  I  see  it  as  plainly  as  I  see  the  sun  in  heaven  —  I 
see  that  disruption  must  produce  such  a  war  as  I  will  not  describe." 
The  anti-slavery  North  viewed  with  consternation  Webster's 
the  seeming  defection  of  their  one-time  leader.  "  apostasy." 

"So  fallen!  so  lost!  the  light  withdrawn 

Which  once  he  wore! 
The  glory  from  his  gray  hairs  gone 

Forevermore ! 
Revile  him  not  —  the  Tempter  hath 

A  snare  for  all; 
And  pitying  tears,  not  scorn  and  wrath, 

Befit  his  fall." 

Thus  the  poet  Whittier  voiced  the  anti-slavery  view  of  Webster's 
advocacy  of  Clay's  compromise  bill.  It  was  generally  believed  that 
the  orator  was  seeking  support  in  the  South  for  the  next  presidential 
election,  but  a  more  charitable  view  is  that  in  his  love  of  union,  which 
he  despaired  of  without  compromise,  he  was  ready  to  sacrifice  even  a 
point  of  morals. 

William  H.  Seward,  ex-Governor  of  New  York  and  the  new  Senator 
from  that  state,  who  was  destined  to  succeed  to  Webster's  position  as 
the  leader  of  political  anti-slavery,  gave  utterance  to  a    geward 
bold  phrase  that  later  became  a  watchword  in  the  anti-    opposes 
slavery  crusade.     In  a  strong  speech  against  compromise, 
he  said,  "There  is  a  higher  law  than  the  Constitution,  which  regulates 
our  authority  over  the  domain."     This  happy  recognition  of  a  "higher 
law"  served  to  crystallize  anti-slavery  sentiment,  and  exercised  great 
influence  in  the  coming  decade. 

After  more  than  nine  months  of  struggle,  in  one  of  the  longest  ses- 


322      TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND  SECTIONAL  STRIFE 


compromise 
enacted. 


The  Fugi 
tive  Slave 
Law. 


sions  on  record,  Congress  passed  Clay's  proposals  in  four  separate 
The  acts  and   adjourned.     Two    months    before    the  end   a 

tragic    event    temporarily    suspended    proceedings    and 
probably  influenced  the  final  outcome.     President  Taylor, 
the  straightforward  old  soldier,  a  man  of  direct  methods  rather  than  of 
compromise,  who  was  under  the 
influence  of  Seward  and  was  sup 
posed  to  incline  toward  the  views 
of    anti-slavery,    suddenly    died. 
Vice  President  Fillmore  of   New 
York,  who  succeeded   to  the 
presidency,  favored  the  compro 
mise,  and  readily  signed  the  vari 
ous  acts. 

One  of  the  features  of  the 
Compromise  of  1850  most  objec 
tionable  to  Northern 
ers  was  the  Fugitive 
Slave  Law.  This  en 
actment  was  placed  on  the  statute 
books  in  order  to  remedy,  if  pos 
sible,  the  defects  of  an  old  law  on 
the  subject  passed  in  1793,  the  en 
forcement  of  which  depended  in 
part  on  state  officials.  After  the 

Supreme  Court  had  intimated  in  1842  that  the  states  had  the  power 
to  prohibit  their  officials  from  performing  duties  imposed  on  them 
by  a  national  law,  the  states,  in  so-called  Personal  Liberty  Laws,  be 
gan  to  prohibit  their  officials  from  assisting  in  carrying  out  the  pro 
visions  of  the  national  Fugitive  Slave  Law.  The  new  Fugitive  Slave 
Law  of  1850  provided  for  enforcement  by  United  States  officials.  A 
slaveholder,  appearing  in  the  North  to  find  an  escaped  slave,  could 
now  avail  himself  of  the  aid  of  United  States  commissioners,  appointed 
by  United  States  Circuit  courts,  who  were  empowered  to  summon  to 
their  aid  all  bystanders  in  making  the  arrest.  To  give  aid  to  the 
fugitive,  in  resistance  to  the  officers  of  the  law,  was  to  be  punishable 
by  a  fine  of  $1000  or  six  months'  imprisonment.  There  could  be  no 
habeas  corpus  for  the  fugitive  black,  no  trial  by  jury,  no  examination  of 
witnesses,  and  no  appeal  from  the  decision  of  the  commissioner  to  a 
higher  court.  To  prove  his  property  the  slaveholder's  own  word  or 
that  of  his  agent  was  sufficient,  while  the  negro  was  not  allowed  to  testify 
in  his  own  behalf.  Such  a  sweeping  denial  to  slaves  of  the  common 


WILLIAM  H.  SEWARD 


QUARREL  OVER  SLAVERY  IN  THE  TERRITORIES       323 

Anglo-Saxon  liberty  rights  was  customary  in  the  laws  of  the  slave  states, 
but  the  North  objected  to  such  a  denial  for  the  nation  at  large. 

Exciting  arrests  and  thrilling  rescues  startled  the  country.  A 
northern  leader  publicly  declared,  "I  have  no  more  hesitation  in 
helping  a  fugitive  slave  than  I  have  in  snatching  a  lamb  Evasions  of 
from  the  jaws  of  a  wolf,  or  of  disengaging  an  infant  from  the  Fugitive 
the  talons  of  an  eagle."  The  sentiment  was  widespread,  ' 
and  in  the  face  of  it  the  law  was  of  little  avail  and  arrests  few  in 
number.  By  stealthy  means,  popularly  known  as  the  Underground 
Railroad,  adopted  by  the  friends  of  the  slaves  to  outwit  the  law,  hun 
dreds  of  blacks  every  year  succeeded  in  making  their  way  north, 
chiefly  through  Ohio  and  Pennsylvania,  into  free  Canada;  and  from 
year  to  year  their  friends  in  the  North  grew  in  number.  In  the  light 
of  results  it  appears  that  the  Southerners  would  have  done  better  for 
the  cause  of  slavery  if  they  had  never  demanded  the  new  law,  for  the 
steady  loss  of  friends  which  went  on  in  the  North  under  the  law's 
operation  was  ultimately  a  far  greater  detriment  to  their  cause  than 
any  that  would  have  been  involved  in  the  immediate  loss  of  a  few 
thousand  dollars' worth  of  property  each  year;  but  this  was  naturally 
not  foreseen  at  the  time. 

The  partisans  of  slavery  were  further  exasperated  by  the  passage 
in  many  northern  states  of  more  Personal  Liberty  Laws,  which  sought 
to  put  legal  obstacles  in  the  way  of  enforcement  of  the  More  Per- 

new   Fugitive   Slave  Law.     Under   another  name   these    sonal  Lib- 

....        .        ,  ,  ,         erty  Laws  in 

were  the  most  practical  nullification  laws  ever  enacted  by  the  Northern 
states  against  the  laws  of  the  United  States.  Vermont  states- 
denied  the  use  of  her  jails  to  the  southern  masters  for  the  temporary 
detention  of  recaptured  fugitives,  required  the  attorney  general 
of  the  state  to  defend  the  fugitives  in  the  courts,  and  guaranteed 
to  the  latter  the  right  of  trial  by  jury.  Slaves  carried  into  the  state 
were  declared  to  be  free,  and  to  take  a  fugitive  out  of  the  state  was 
strictly  forbidden. 

Harriet  Beecher  Stowe  was  stirred  by  the  stories  of  captures  and 
escapes  that  filled  every  part  of  the  land.     One  Sunday  morning,  at  the 
communion  table  of  a  little  church  in  Brunswick,  Maine,    «uncle 
the  seat  of  Bowdoin  College,  where  her  husband  was  a  pro-    Tom's ^ 
fessor,  she  was  suddenly  overcome  by  a  vision  of  the  cruel 
ties  of  slavery,  and  with  tears  and  sobs  hastened  home  to  write  out  that 
part  of  " Uncle  Tom's  Cabin"  which  concerns  the  death  of  Uncle  Tom. 
When  she  read  the  description  to  her  little  son  he  burst  out  sobbing  and 
cried,  "Oh,  Mamma,  slavery  is  the  most  cursed  thing  in  the  world!" 
Springing  from  a  deeply  religious  nature,  the  book  discussed  the  moral 


324     TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND  SECTIONAL  STRIFE 

aspects  of  slavery  from  the  anti-slavery  point  of  view.  It  was  wholly 
one-sided,  but  it  proved  to  be  a  powerful  agent  in  arousing  in  the  youth 
of  the  land  sympathy  for  the  slaves.  One  hundred  thousand  copies 
of  it  were  sold  in  a  few  weeks,  and  over  three  hundred  thousand  copies 
in  the  first  year,  1852;  eight  powerful  printing  presses  running  day  and 
night  were  barely  able  to  keep  up  with  the  popular  demand.  It  is 
not  an  exaggeration  to  say  that  no  other  printed  book  ever  agitated  the 
American  public  as  did  this  one.  Its  influence  was  especially  strong 
on  the  youth  of  the  land,  who  were  to  become  voters  in  the  next  decade. 

When  the  Whigs  assembled  in  their  national  convention  of  1852 
the  founder  of  their  party  lay  dying.  Clay  lived  to  approve  the  work 
The  death  of  the  convention,  but  died  before  the  election.  As  an 
of  Clay.  orator,  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Representatives,  Senator, 

and  Secretary  of  State,  he  was  one  of  the  greatest  political  leaders  of 
the  nation.  Three  times  he  was  the  candidate  of  his  party  for  the 
presidency  and  as  many  times  he  was  defeated.  His  political  judgment 
was  occasionally  faulty,  as  his  untimely  introduction  of  the  bank  ques 
tion  into  the  campaign  of  1832  and  the  letters  on  Texas  in  1844  tend 
to  show.  He  did  not  possess  great  intellect  and  he  was  not  highly 
educated,  but  his  versatility  was  extraordinary,  and  he  enjoyed  to 
a  remarkable  degree  the  ability  to  win  the  love  and  devotion  of  his 
followers. 

One  of  Clay's  last  public  acts  was  to  join  with  forty-three  other 
members  of  Congress  in  signing  the  following  pledge:  "The  under- 
Determina-  signed,  members  of  the  thirty-first  Congress  of  the  United 
thT Com- 6P  States,  believing  that  renewal  of  sectional  controversy  on 
promise.  the  subject  of  slavery  would  be  both  dangerous  to  the 

Union  and  destructive  of  its  objects,  and  seeing  no  mode  by  which  such 
controversy  can  be  avoided  except  by  a  strict  adherence  to  the  settle 
ment  thereof  effected  by  the  Compromise  Acts  passed  at  the  last 
session  of  Congress,  do  hereby  declare  their  intention  to  maintain  the 
said  settlement  inviolate  and  to  resist  all  attempts  to  repeal  or  to  alter 
the  acts  aforesaid,  unless  by  general  consent  of  the  friends  of  the  meas 
ure,  and  to  remedy  such  evils,  if  any,  as  time  and  experience  may 
develop."  Then  followed  the  further  pledge  to  support  no  candidate 
for  office  known  to  be  opposed  to  the  compromise  measures  or  to  be 
desirous  of  renewing  the  slavery  controversy  in  any  form. 

Daniel  Webster,  who  was  associated  with  Clay  in  public  life  for 
almost  forty  years,  died  a  few  months  later.  He  never  received  the 
The  death  of  honor  of  a  presidential  nomination  at  the  hands  of  a 
Webster.  great  party,  though  fourteen  electoral  votes  were  cast 
for  him  in  1836.  He  was  not  a  man  to  inspire  a  warm  personal  fol- 


QUARREL  OVER  SLAVERY  IN  THE  TERRITORIES         325 

lowing;  his  claim  to  greatness  lay  rather  in  his  success  as  a  constitu 
tional  lawyer,  as  an  efficient  Senator  and  Secretary  of  State,  and  in 
his  wonderful  ability  as  an  orator. 

Passing  over  Webster,  who  sought  the  prize  of  a  presidential 
nomination  even  at  the  very  end  of  his  career,  the  Whigs  for  a  third 
time  gave  their  nomination  to  a  military  chieftain,  Gen-  The  ^ 
eral  Winfield  Scott,  the  conqueror  of  Mexico;  the  Demo-  dential  cam- 
crats,  after  a  long  struggle  in  their  convention,  named  P^lg1  of 
General  Franklin  Pierce  of  New  Hampshire,  and  the 
Free  Sellers  Senator  John  P.  Hale  of  New  Hampshire.  Both  the 
Whigs  and  the  Democrats  ardently  proclaimed  the  sacredness  of  the 
Compromise  of  1850,  but  with  the  odium  of  the  Fugitive  Slave  Law 
resting  heavily  upon  them  the  Whigs  met  an  overwhelming  defeat. 
Pierce  received  254  electoral  votes  to  42  for  Scott.  Said  a  wit  of  the 
time  with  truth,  "Here  lies  the  Whig  party,  which  died  of  an  effort 
to  swallow  the  Fugitive  Slave  Law."  It  was  unfortunate  for  the 
Whigs  that  their  President  was  in  office  when  that  ill-fated  bill  came 
from  the  capitol  for  executive  approval,  for  few  Presidents  in  the  crisis 
would  have  refused  their  signature;  and  it  was  unfortunate  that  on  the 
two  occasions  when  they  succeeded  in  placing  their  candidate  in  the 
White  House  he  soon  died.  Misfortune  attended  the  party  of  Clay 
and  Webster  throughout  its  history.  New  phases  of  the  slavery  ques 
tion  swept  the  Republican  party  into  existence  in  1854,  and  in  the 
presidential  election  of  1856  the  WThigs  waged  their  last  contest. 

THE   KANSAS-NEBRASKA  ACT 

Franklin  Pierce  was  another  dark  horse  in  national  politics,  without 
distinction  as  a  statesman  or  as  a  lawyer  and  with  very  little  as  a 
soldier.     While  pushing  their  party  candidate,   General    Franklin 
Scott,  the  Whigs  published  a  campaign  book  of  a  half    Pierce- 
dozen  pages,  one  inch  by  one-half  inch  in  size,  printed  in  diminutive 
type  and  inscribed,  "The  Military  Services  of  General  Franklin  Pierce." 
Pierce  was  an  amiable  gentleman  of  fine  manners,  who  made  many 
friends,  but  he  was  devoid  of  most  of  the  qualities  of  statesmanship. 

The  new  leaders,  who  came  to  the  front  after  the  death  of  Calhoun, 
Clay,  and  Webster,  could  not  be  expected  to  stand  by  the  compromises 
of  their  predecessors.     They  had  not  felt  the  nationalizing    squatter 
influences  of  the  War  of  1812,  but  had  been  bred  in  the    so^reignty 
succeeding  period  of  sectional  strife.     Within  a  year  after    and 
the  inauguration  of  President  Pierce,  Senator  Stephen  A.    Nebraska. 
Douglas  of  Illinois,  who  had  not  signed  Clay's  pledge  of  silence  on  the 
subject  of  slavery,  proposed  a  law  in  the  Senate  of  the  United  States 


326      TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND  SECTIONAL  STRIFE 

which  would  set  aside  the  Missouri  Compromise  of  1820  as  a  method 
of  dealing  with  slavery  in  that  part  of  the  Louisiana  Territory  not  yet 
admitted  to  statehood,  and  would  place  the  stamp  of  approval  on 
Cass's  doctrine  of  popular  sovereignty.  In  the  Northern  States,  where 
it  was  supposed  that  the  law  of  1820,  which  had  regulated  the  subject 
of  slavery  in  the  Louisiana  Territory  for  more  than  thirty  years, 
was  forever  fixed,  Douglas's  proposal  aroused  a  storm  of  protest. 

The  restless  frontiersmen  of  Illinois,  Wisconsin,  Iowa,  and  Missouri 
were  now  desiring  to  settle  in  the  Louisiana  lands  beyond  the  Missouri, 
The  essence  an<^  ^  was  *n  t^ie^r  interest,  Douglas  claimed,  that  he 
of  the  new  proposed  the  new  law.  Utah  and  New  Mexico,  that  is, 
all  the  Mexican  cession  outside  of  California,  had  already 
been  organized  as  territories,  and  by  the  terms  of  the  Compromise  of 
1850  the  people  in  the  two  territories  were  left  free  to  decide  the  slavery 
question  within  their  borders  as  they  thought  best.  Douglas's  plan 
was  to  throw  open  to  settlement  in  the  same  way  the  northern  or  free 
portion  of  the  Louisiana  country  by  organizing  it  into  two  territories, 
Kansas  in  the  south  and  Nebraska  in  the  north,  and  to  allow  the 
settlers  therein  to  exercise  the  right  of  popular  sovereignty  on  the 
question  of  slavery  in  their  midst.  The  Missouri  Compromise,  which 
had  declared  the  same  territory  free  soil,  was  expressly  declared  "inop 
erative  and  void."  Kansas  was  expected  to  develop  into  a  slave  ter 
ritory  and  Nebraska  into  free  soil.  To  the  self-reliant  Americans  of 
the  frontier,  who  from  the  early  days  had  always  preferred  to  decide 
matters  for  themselves  and  to  do  things  in  their  own  way,  the  idea  of 
making  their  own  decision  on  slavery  in  their  midst  was  decidedly 
popular.  The  proposition,  however,  meant  giving  slavery  another 
chance  to  secure  a  foothold  in  territory  already  devoted  to  freedom; 
freedom  had  nothing  to  gain  and  everything  to  lose  by  the  proposal, 
slavery  nothing  to  lose  and  everything  to  gain.  Probably  no  measure 
in  Congress  was  ever  more  bitterly  debated  than  was  the  Kansas- 
Nebraska  Bill,  but  it  passed  both  houses  of  Congress  and  was  signed 
by  the  President,  May  30,  1854. 

Every  new  political  party  springs  from  among  those  who  have  a 
political  grievance  and  who  despair  of  improvement  under  the  existing 
The  origin  of  parties.  The  Democratic-Republican  party  was  made  up 
the  Repub-  of  those  who  disapproved  of  the  way  in  which  the  Fed 
eralists  were  administering  the  government  under  Wash 
ington,  and  the  Whigs  embraced  those  who  were  opposed  to  Jackson 
and  his  policies.  The  present  Republican  party  now  came  into 
existence  on  the  single  principle  of  opposition  to  allowing  slavery 
another  opportunity  to  enter  the  territories.  There  were  Free  Soilers 


QUARREL  OVER  SLAVERY  IN  THE  TERRITORIES        327 

in  the  new  organization,  Anti-Nebraska  Democrats,  Anti-Slavery  or 
Conscience  Whigs,  all  united  on  the  proposition  that  the  Compromise 
of  1820  should  be  kept  sacred  and  that  slavery  should  not  be  allowed' 
to  spread  to  territories  once  made  free.  The  Republicans  believed 
that  Congress  and  not  the  people  of  the  territories  should  decide  such  a 
question,  and  that  the  settlement  of  the  question  in  1820  should 
remain  fixed. 

»      The  name  Republican  for  the  new  party  was  suggested  at  an  anti- 
slavery  meeting  at  Ripon,  Wisconsin,  while  the  Kansas-Nebraska  Act 
was  still  before  Congress,  and  was  adopted  for  the  first 
time  by  a  state  convention  at  Jackson,  Michigan,  in  July,    growth  of 
shortly  after  the  bill  became  a  law.     This  convention  in    the  new 
Michigan  may  be  looked  upon  as  the  birthplace  of  the 

Republican  party,  and  it  is  signifi 
cant  of  the  growing  political  influ 
ence  of  the  West  that  the  new 
party  struck  its  roots  first  in  that 
section.  Other  states  rapidly  fol 
lowed  Michigan,  and  in  1855  a  call 
was  issued  for  the  first  national 
convention  of  the  party  to  meet  in 
Pittsburg,  February  22,  1856.  So 
strong  was  the  movement  that  in 
Congress,  1855-1857,  there  were 
117  Representatives  and  n  Sena 
tors  pledged  to  oppose  slavery  in 
the  territories. 

Stephen  A.  Douglas,  who  had 
precipitated  the  crisis,  was  born 
in  Vermont  in   1813,    stephen  A. 
and  at  the   age   of    Douglas  and 
twenty  had  migrated    ^  motives' 
to  Illinois,  where  he  became  a  dis 
trict  attorney  two  years  after  his  arrival.     At  twenty-five  he  was  in 
the  state  legislature  by  the  side  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  at  twenty-eight 
he  was  a  justice  of  the  supreme  court  of  the  state;  at  thirty  a  mem 
ber  of  the  national  House  of  Representatives  from  Illinois,  and  at  thirty- 
five  a  United  States  Senator  from  the  same  state.     He  was  a  man 
of  great   ambition   and   energy,   and   of    unquestioned   ability   as   a 
speaker  and  political  leader.     After  the  disappearance  of  Calhoun, 
Clay,  and  Webster,  Douglas  was  the  most  prominent  figure  in  national 
politics  down  to  1860.     The  belief  was  prevalent  that  he  took  the  bold 

22 


STEPHEN  A.  DOUGLAS 


328      TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND    SECTIONAL  STRIFE 

step  of  disturbing  the  Missouri  Compromise  in  order  that  he  might  win 
the  presidential  nomination  at  the  hands  of  his  party  in  1856.  It  was 
the  opportunity  for  a  master  politician.  His  measure  was  sure  to  win 
popularity  in  the  slave-holding  states,  and  from  its  local  option  features 
might  be  expected  to  prove  attractive  in  other  sections,  especially  in 
the  West.  It  was  also  perfectly  constitutional,  for  the  Missouri  Com 
promise,  like  any  other  law  of  Congress,  was  subject  to  repeal  by  the 
body  that  enacted  it.  9 

The  impracticability  of  the  Kansas-Nebraska  Act  became  apparent 
almost  as  soon  as  it  was  passed.  The  champions  of  slavery  from  the 
The  practical  South  and  the  champions  of  freedom  from  the  North 
working  of  rushed  out  to  the  plains  of  Kansas,  each  side  seeking  to 
sovereignty  get  there  first  and  under  popular  sovereignty  organize  the 
in  Kansas.  territorial  government  in  its  own  interests,  for  slavery  or 
for  freedom,  before  the  other  side  could  arrive.  The  law  was  an  invi 
tation  to  the  champions  to  come  to  the  frontier  and  fight  it  out;  and 
fight  they  did. 

Under  the  auspices  of  the  New  England  Emigrant  Aid  Society 
several  thousand  partisans  of  freedom  arrived  in  Kansas  before  the 
The  failure  end  of  the  summer  of  1854  and  founded  Topeka,  Law- 
of  the  plan.  rence,  and  other  towns  on  the  rich  bottom  lands  of  the 
Kansas  River.  The  pro-slavery  immigrants  from  Missouri  founded 
Atchison,  Lecompton,  and  Leavenworth  at  about  the  same  time. 
On  the  occasion  of  the  first  election  in  the  new  territory  early  in  1855 
several  thousand  Missouri  " border  ruffians"  crossed  the  line'  into 
Kansas,  stuffed  the  ballot  boxes,  and  succeeded  in  electing  a  pro-slavery 
legislature,  which  later  sent  a  duly  accredited  pro-slavery  delegate 
to  Congress.  The  opponents  of  slavery  repudiated  these  acts  and 
sent  one  of  their  number  to  represent  them  in  Congress  as  the  dele 
gate  of  the  territory,  while  they  proceeded  to  organize  a  government 
of  their  own.  The  lovers  of  liberty  in  Kansas,  like  the  lovers  of 
liberty  in  California,  called  a  constitutional  convention  without  the 
permission  of  Congress,  and  in  that  body,  which  assembled  at  Topeka, 
they  framed  a  free  constitution,  later  ratified  it  at  the  polls,  and  under 
it  sought  admission  into  the  Union  as  a  free  state;  they  even  went  so  far 
as  to  elect  a  governor  of  their  own,  to  serve  after  Kansas  should  become 
a  state.  Under  orders  from  President  Pierce  United  States  troops  dis 
persed  this  "impertinent"  Topeka  government,  and  its  leaders  were 
indicted  for  treason.  Kansas  was  torn  between  the  supporters  of  the 
"free  state"  government  and  those  of  the  opposing  government  backed 
by  the  President. 

The  nation  entered  the  presidential  year  of  1856  with  its  attention 


QUARREL  OVER  SLAVERY  IN  THE  TERRITORIES         329 

focused  on  "bleeding  Kansas."  The  first  two  months  of  the  year 
frere  marked  by  a  bitter  struggle  in  the  national  House  of  The  exciting 
Representatives  between  the  hosts  of  freedom  and  of  year  of  1856- 
slavery  over  the  election  of  a  Speaker  for  that  body.  Nathaniel  P. 
Banks  of  Massachusetts,  an  opponent  of  the  extension  of  slavery 
into  the  territories,  was  elected  by  a  close  vote.  On  the  twentieth 
of  May,  Charles  Sumner  of  Massachusetts  made  a  powerful  speech 
in  the  Senate  on  "The  Crime  against  Kansas,"  in  which  he  defended 
the  free  state  government  there  and  poured  vials  of  contempt  on  the 
slaveholders  and  their  methods  in  Kansas.  Senator  Butler  of  South 
Carolina  was  especially  scored.  It  was  a  speech  which  for  its  bitter 
ness  might  have  called  forth  the  condemnation  of  the  fair-minded 
of  all  sections,  but  for  the  cruel  chastisement  that  followed.  Two 
days  after  the  delivery  of  the  speech,  while  he  was  sitting  at  his  desk 
in  the  Senate  Chamber  after  that  body  had  adjourned,  Sumner  was 
struck  down  and  almost  beaten  to  death  by  Brooks  of  South  Caro 
lina,  a  member  of  the  House  of  Representatives  and  a  relative  of 
Butler.  On  the  day  intervening  between  the  speech  and  the  assault, 
the  Missourians  in  Kansas  tried  to  wipe  out  the  free  state  capital  at 
Lawrence,  and  destroyed  the  public  buildings,  the  hotel,  the  printing 
presses,  and  some  of  the  private  dwellings;  and  three  days  after  the 
sack  of  Lawrence,  on  May  24,  that  crime  was  avenged  by  John  Brown 
and  a  small  band  of  anti-slavery  followers,  who  in  a  single  night  dragged 
six  slavery  sympathizers  from  their  cabins  at  Osawatomie  on  the 
Pottawatomie  in  Kansas  and  butchered  them  in  cold  blood.  Brown 
was  "of  the  Puritan  stock,  a  Cromwellian,  who  believed  in  God  and  at 
the  same  time  in  'keeping  his  powder  dry.'  He  believed  in  'the  sword 
of  the  Lord  and  of  Gideon,'  and  acted  accordingly."  These  outrages 
of  civil  war  perpetrated  on  both  sides  showed  plainly  that  popular 
sovereignty  had  brought  to  Kansas  not  the  peace  which  Douglas  had 
predicted,  but  the  sword. 

The  national  House  of  Representatives  sent  a  com- 
mittee  of  investigation  to  the  scene  of  strife,  and  its 
proceedings  served  to  keep  the  popular  interest  in  Kansas    jjjjjjjj  in 
at  a  high  pitch  throughout   the  presidential   campaign. 

With  "bleeding  Kansas"  as  the  one  absorbing  theme  and  with  a 
new  party  of  unknown  but  rapidly  growing  strength  in    The  presi_ 
the  field,  drawing  a  majority  of  the  Whigs  into  its  ranks,    dential  cam- 


the  national  contest  was  bound  to  be  a  stirring  one.     The    ig      °xiie 


Republicans,  adjourning  from  their  preliminary  conven-    Republican 

tion  in  Pittsburg,  met  later  in  Philadelphia  to  write  their 

€rst  platform  of  principles  and  to  name  their  first  standard-bearer 


330     TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND  SECTIONAL  STRIFE 

They  condemned  the  administration  for  the  outcome  of  popular 
sovereignty  in  Kansas  and  denounced  slavery  as  a  "relic  of  barbarism." 
They  passed  over  William  H.  Seward,  the  real  leader  of  the  party,  who 
was  too  prominent  and  had  made  too  many  enemies  by  his  bold  course 
to  be  a  successful  candidate,  and  gave  the  first  place  on  their  ticket  to 
John  C.  Fremont  of  California,  who  was  popularly  known  as  the 
"Pathfinder"  because  of  four  expeditions  which  he  had  made  across 
the  continent  to  California  and  to  Oregon  in  the  forties  under  the 
auspices  of  the  national  government. 

Douglas,  the  real  leader  of  the  Democrats,  was  likewise  passed 
over  by  his  party  because  of  the  storm  of  disapproval  called  forth 
The  Dem  ^  ^  failure  of  his  doctrine  in  Kansas.  President 

crats  and  Pierce,  whose  fate  recalls  that  of  Fillmore  in  1850,  could 
not  ^e  renominated  with  any  hope  of  election,  because 
he  had  signed  the  Kansas-Nebraska  measure.  William  L. 
Marcy,  the  Secretary  of  State,  was  a  possible  candidate,  but  after 
a  spirited  contest  in  the  convention  the  nomination  fell  to  James 
Buchanan,  minister  to  Great  Britain,  who  had  been  absent  from  the 
country  when  the  Kansas-Nebraska  Act  was  passed  and  therefore 
had  taken  no  part  in  the  exciting  national  politics  between  1854  and 
1856.  A  small  third  party,  called  the  Know-Nothings,  organized  to 
oppose  the  growing  foreign  element  in  the  country,  joined  with  the 
remnant  of  the  Whigs  in  support  of  ex-President  Fillmore. 

The  Southerners  threatened  to  secede  from  the  Union  if  the  "  Black 
Republicans,"  so-called  in  derision  from  their  devotion  to  the  interests 
The  result  °^  ^e  neSroes>  succeeded  in  electing  their  candidate. 
Buchanan  secured  a  popular  vote  of  1,838,000  and  174 
votes  in  the  electoral  colleges,  to  1,340,000  popular  votes  and  114  elec 
toral  votes  for  Fremont.  Since  1840  the  showing  of  the  anti-slavery 
element,  as  it  entered  into  national  politics,  had  been  7000  votes  in  1840, 
62,000  in  1844,  290,000  in  1848,  156,000  in  1852,  and  1,340,006  in  1856. 

THE   DRED   SCOTT  DECISION 

The  political  career  of  James  Buchanan  resembles  that  of  John 
Quincy  Adams  in  the  length  of  his  public  services  and  the  number  of 
important  posts  which  he  filled,  though  not  in  the  distinction  of  the 
James  services  rendered.  When  Buchanan  entered  upon  the 

Buchanan.  presidency  at  the  advanced  age  of  sixty-six,  he  had 
served  successively  as  a  member  of  the  House  of  Representatives  and 
of  the  United  States  Senate  from  Pennsylvania,  minister  to  Russia, 
Secretary  of  State,  and  minister  to  Great  Britain.  Despite  his  ex 
perience  he  was  a  weak  President. 


QUARREL  OVER  SLAVERY  IN  THE  TERRITORIES        331 

The  several  plans  for  the  settlement  of  the  question  of  slavery  in 
the  territories  were  still  before  the  nation.  First,  there  was  the  plan 
of  allowing  Congress  to  decide  the  question,  which  was  Thg  ^^ 
followed  in  the  Ordinance  of  1787  and  in  the  Missouri  ScottDeti- 
Compromise  and  proposed  in  the  Wilmot  Proviso; 
second,  that  of  Cass  and  Douglas,  embodied  in  the 
Kansas-Nebraska  Act,  of  allowing  the  people  themselves  in  the 
territories  to  make  the  decision;  third,  that  of  Calhoun,  who  had 
maintained  that  the  Constitution  carried  slavery  into  the  territories 
with  its  guarantee  of  protection  of  property  rights.  A  few  days  after 
the  inauguration  of  President  Buchanan  the  Supreme  Court  of  the 
United  States  set  aside  the  plan  of  Douglas,  which  at  that  time  was 
in  the  ascendency,  quite  as  suddenly  and  unexpectedly  as  Douglas 
himself  had  brushed  aside  the  congressional  plan  of  the  Missouri 
Compromise,  and  by  a  decision  bearing  the  dignity  and  the  prestige 
of  the  Supreme  Bench  indorsed  the  plan  of  Calhoun. 

This  decision,  which  was  delivered  in  1857,  was  occasioned  by  a  case 
which  had  arisen  in  Missouri  ten  years  earlier.  A  slave,  Dred  Scott 
by  name,  whom  his  master  had  taken  from  the  slave  The  leading 
state  of  Missouri,  into  the  territory  of  Minnesota,  which  points  in  the 
had  been  made  free  by  the  Missouri  Compromise,  and 
then  had  brought  back  to  Missouri,  sued  for  his  freedom  on  the  ground 
that  residence  in  a  free  country  had  made  him  free.  The  court  held 
that  a  negro  descended  from  slaves  could  not  be  a  citizen  of  the  United 
States  and  therefore  could  not  bring  a  suit  at  law  in  the  courts  of  the 
United  States.  Here  the  tribunal  might  have  stopped,  as  this  settled 
the  question  before  it.  The  court,  however,  went  on  to  say  that  even 
if  Dred  Scott  had  had  the  right  to  bring  the  suit,  residence  in  the  sup 
posed  free  territory  could  not  make  him  free,  because  that  territory 
was  not  legally  free  and  Congress  had  had  no  right  to  declare  it  to  be 
free;  that,  therefore,  the  Missouri  Compromise  of  1820,  declaring  the 
Louisiana  country  north  of  36°  30'  to  be  free  territory,  was  unconstitu 
tional;  that  a  slave  was  a  piece  of  property,  the  ownership  of  which 
was  guaranteed  by  the  fifth  amendment  of  the  Constitution  just  like 
the  ownership  of  any  piece  of  property;  and  that  the  provisions  of  the 
Constitution  applied  to  the  territories  as  well  as  to  the  states.  The 
minority  of  the  court  presented  a  powerful  dissenting  opinion. 

Said  President  Buchanan  in  a  message  to  Congress:  "I  cordially 
congratulate  you  on- the  final  settlement  by  the  Supreme    presi(jeilt 
Court  of  the  United  States  of  the  question  of  slavery  in    Buchanan  on 
the  territories,  which  had  presented  an  aspect  so  truly    the  decision- 
formidable  at  the  commencement  of  my  administration.    The  right  has 


332      TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND  SECTIONAL  STRIFE 

been  established  of  every  citizen  to  take  his  property  of  every  kind,  in 
cluding  slaves,  into  the  common  territories  belonging  equally  to  all  the 
states  of  the  confederacy,  and  to  have  it  protected  there  under  the 
Federal  Constitution.  Neither  Congress  nor  a  territorial  legislature 
nor  any  human  power  has  any  authority  to  impair  this  vested  right." 
The  South  was  highly  delighted  over  the  revolutionary  decision, 
from  which  there  was  no  appeal.  The  North,  on  the  other  hand,  was 
Effects  of  in  consternation.  No  longer  could  a  fight  against  slavery 
the  decision.  jn  the  territories  be  of  any  avail,  if  the  national  govern 
ment  was  required  by  the  Constitution  to  recognize  slavery  there.  If 
the  slaveholding  faction  had  so  far  gained  possession  of  the  law-making 
and  law-interpreting  branches  of  the  government  as  to  win  two  impor 
tant  concessions,  first  the  Kansas-Nebraska  Act  and  second  the  Dred 
Scott  Decision,  what  would  be  the  next  step?  Might  not  the  same 
faction  insist  also  that  the  Constitution  carried  slavery  into  the  states? 
Abraham  Lincoln  declared,  "If  I  were  in  Congress,  and  a  vote  were  to 
come  up  on  a  question  whether  slavery  should  be  prohibited  in  a  new 
territory,  in  spite  of  the  Dred  Scott  Decision,  I  would  vote  that  it 
should."  Senator  Seward  said,  "Let  the  court  recede.  Whether  it 
recedes  or  not,  we  shall  reorganize  the  court  and  thus  reform  its 
political  sentiments  and  practices  and  bring  them  into  harmony  with 
the  Constitution  and  the  laws  of  the  nation." 

THE  LECOMPTON  CONSTITUTION  AND  THE  LINCOLN-DOUGLAS 

DEBATES 

The  encouraged  pro-slavery  party  in  Kansas  proceeded  to  prepare 
for  statehood,  just  as  the  free  state  people  had  tried  to  do  at  Topeka. 
They  framed  a  state  constitution  at  Lecompton  in  Novem- 
Lecompton  ber,  1857,  and  by  a  ruse  attempted  to  make  it  appear  that 
constitution  a  majority  of  the  people  of  Kansas  approved  of  the  docu 
ment.  It  was  a  slave  constitution.  "The  right  of  the 
owner  of  a  slave  to  such  slave  ...  is  ...  as  inviolable  as  the  right 
of  the  owner  of  any  property  whatever.  .  .  .  Free  negroes  shall  not 
be  permitted  to  live  in  this  state  under  any  circumstances."  The 
people  were  to  vote  for  the  instrument  "with  slavery"  or  "without 
slavery,"  which  meant  only  that  if  it  should  be  adopted  "without 
slavery"  slaves  might  not  be  brought  in,  but  that  the  slaveholders 
already  there  would  be  protected  in  their  slave  property  and  that  free 
negroes  would  never  be  allowed  to  live  in  the  state.  Since  they  were 
denied  the  opportunity  of  passing  on  this  constitution  as  a  whole,  which 
was  the  only  course  that  the  anti-slavery  partisans  could  follow  with 
consistency,  they  spurned  the  trick  and  refrained  from  voting  alto- 


QUARREL  OVER  SLAVERY  IN  THE  TERRITORIES         333 

gather;  and  the  constitution  "with  slavery"  was  approved  by  a  vote 
of  6143  to  589.  The  opponents  of  slavery,  however,  succeeded  in 
electing  a  majority  of  the  legislature  under  the  new  constitution.  When 
this  body  had  met  and  directed  that  the  people  should  have  another 
chance  to  vote  on  the  constitution  as  a  whole,  the  constitution  was 
rejected  by  a  majority  of  10,000.  There  could  be  no  doubt  as  to  the 
mind  of  the  people  of  Kansas  in  regard  to  slavery. 

Now  came  the  supreme  moment  of  President  Buchanan's  official 
career.  A  similar  crisis  had  come  to  President  Fillmore  when  he  was 
forced  to  a  decision  on  the  Fugitive  Slave  Law,  and  to  Rejection  of 
President  Pierce  when  the  Kansas- Nebraska  Bill  came  the  Lecomp- 
to  him  from  Congress;  and,  like  these  two  Presidents,  tion  by 
Buchanan  wrecked  his  administration  by  his  choice.  In  a  Consress. 
message  to  Congress  he  urged  the  lawmakers  to  give  to  the  Lecompton 
constitution  their  official  approval  and  under  it  make  Kansas  a  slave 
state.  Kansas  is  "at  this  moment  as  much  a  slave  state  as  Georgia  or 
South  Carolina,"  wrote  the  President.  A  violent  struggle  followed  in 
Congress.  Douglas  rushed  to  the  defense  of  the  principle  of  popular 
sovereignty,  which  he  claimed  was  outraged  by  the  manner  in  which 
the  Lecompton  constitution  was  adopted,  defied  the  President,  and 
with  all  his  powers  opposed  the  Lecompton  constitution.  It  was  not 
against  slavery  as  an  institution  that  he  was  fighting,  for  he  cared  not, 
he  professed,  whether  it  was  "voted  down  or  voted  up";  rather  he  was, 
fighting  for  the  right  of  the  people  of  the  territory  to  a  fair  vote.  In 
the  North  Douglas's  dramatic  break  with  the  administration  and 
opposition  to  the  Lecompton  constitution  were  popular,  but  the  South 
was  enraged  at  the  seeming  desertion  of  the  leader  who  had  done  so 
much  for  slavery  four  years  earlier.  The  bill  to  admit  Kansas  under 
the  slave  constitution  passed  the  Senate  but  failed  in  the  House  of 
Representatives;  and  then  in  the  deadlock  the  two  houses  passed  a 
bill,  introduced  in  the  House  of  Representatives  by  English  of  Indiana, 
according  to  which  certain  gifts  of  lands  were  offered  to  Kansas,  if 
she  would  accept  the  Lecompton  constitution.  By  11,088  votes 
to  1788  the  people  rejected  the  bribe,  and  Kansas  waited  until  1861, 
when  she  was  made  a  state  under  a  free  constitution. 

In  the  summer  of  1858,  after  he  had  broken  with  the  administration, 
Douglas  returned  to  Illinois  to  seek  reelection  in  the  state  legislature 
to  the  United  States  Senate.  Opposing  him,  as  the  can-  , 

j.j    ,         »  -i  T~>         IT  i  • i  i   f  •       i      The  Lincoln- 

didate  of  the  new  Republican  party,  was  his  old  friend,    Douglas  de- 
Abraham  Lincoln.     The   latter,  when   still  a   boy,  had    kates  in 
come  into  the  state  from  the  slave  state  of  Kentucky,  while 
Douglas  had  come  in  his  young  manhood  from  the  free  state  of  Ver- 


334      TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND   SECTIONAL  STRIFE 

mont.  Both  were  self-made  men,  both  active  in  the  profession  of  the 
law,  and  both  had  served  in  the  Illinois  legislature  and  in  the  lower 
house  of  Congress.  Lincoln  left  Washington  after  a  single  term  in 
the  House  of  Representatives  and  returned  to  Illinois  to  resume 
the  practice  of  law,  while  Douglas  remained  at  the  national  capital 
and  entered  the  Senate.  The  Kansas-Nebraska  Act  aroused  Lincoln 
to  a  fresh  interest  in  politics,  and  he  again  entered  the  political  arena. 
When  Douglas  began  to  tour  the  state  for  the  sake  of  securing  a  Demo 
cratic  majority  in  the  legislature  which  should  return  him  to  the 
Senate,  Lincoln,  as  the  Republican  candidate  for  the  same  office, 
challenged  him  to  a  series  of  debates  and  Douglas  accepted. 

The  principal  topic  in  the  debates  was  slavery  in  the  territories,  and 
on  this  subject  Lincoln  propounded  to  his  adversary  a  fatal  question. 
Douglas's  The  latter  nad  already  alienated  the  South  by  his  attitude 
"Freeport  on  the  Lecompton  constitution,  and  by  merciless  logic 
Lincoln  now  forced  him  to  take  his  stand  in  opposition 
to  the  Dred  Scott  Decision.  Which  theory  held,  queried  Lincoln,  that 
of  the  Dred  Scott  Decision  or  that  of  popular  sovereignty?  Douglas 
attempted  to  defend  popular  sovereignty  by  proclaiming  what  is  now 
known  as  the  "  Freeport  Doctrine,"  because  it  was  at  this  town  in 
Illinois  that  he  committed  himself  on  the  subject.  Lincoln  asked, 
"Can  the  people  of  a  United  States  territory,  in  any  lawful  way, 
against  the  wish  of  any  citizen  of  the  United  States,  exclude  slavery 
from  its  limits  prior  to  the  formation  of  a  state  constitution?"  Douglas 
replied:  "I  answer  emphatically,  as  Mr.  Lincoln  has  heard  me  answer 
a  hundred  times  from  every  stump  in  Illinois,  that  in  my  opinion  the 
people  of  a  territory  can,  by  lawful  means,  exclude  slavery  from  their 
limits  prior  to  the  formation  of  a  state  constitution.  ...  It  matters  not 
what  way  the  Supreme  Court  may  hereafter  decide  as  to  the  abstract 
question  whether  slavery  may  or  may  not  go  into  a  territory  under 
the  Constitution,  the  people  have  the  lawful  means  to  introduce  it  or 
to  exclude  it  as  they  please,  for  the  reason  that  slavery  cannot  exist  a 
day  or  an  hour  anywhere  unless  it  is  supported  by  local  police  regula 
tions.  Those  police  regulations  can  only  be  established  by  the  local 
legislature;  and  if  the  people  are  opposed  to  slavery,  they  will  elect 
representatives  to  that  body,  who  will,  by  unfriendly  legislation, 
effectually  prevent  the  introduction  of  it  into  their  midst.  If,  on  the 
contrary,  they  are  for  it,  their  legislation  will  favor  its  extension. 
Hence,  no  matter  what  the  decision  of  the  Supreme  Court  may  be  on 
that  abstract  question,  still  the  right  of  the  people  to  make  a  slave 
territory  or  a  free  territory  is  perfect  and  complete  under  the  Nebraska 
bill.  I  hope  Mr.  Lincoln  deems  my  answer  satisfactory  on  that  point." 


QUARREL  OVER  SLAVERY  IN  THE  TERRITORIES         335 

And  Mr.  Lincoln  was  satisfied,  for  he  saw  that  such  an  answer  would 
turn  the  Southerners  from  Douglas  beyond  all  hope  of  reconciliation, 
and  deprive  him  of  their  support  for  the  presidency  in  1860.  "I  am 
after  larger  game,"  said  Lincoln  to  friends,  who  opposed  his  propounding 
the  question;  "if  Douglas  answers  as  you  say  he  will,  he  can  never 
be  President,  and  the  battle  of  1860  is  worth  a  hundred  of  this."  The 
sum  and  substance  of  Douglas's  answer,  according  to  Lincoln,  was 
"that  a'  thing  may  be  lawfully  driven  from  the  place  where  it  has  a 
lawful  right  to  stay." 

Lincoln  lost  the  senatorship,  but  by  widening  the  breach  in  the 
Democratic  party  between  the  followers  of  Douglas  and  the    DOUgias  wins 
radical  Southerners  he  was  making  possible  the  national  vie-    reelection  to 
tory  of  the  Republicans  under  his  own  leadership  in  1860. 

FOREIGN  AFFAIRS,    1849-1861 

While  slavery  was  breeding  strife  in  domestic  politics,  the  same 
question  obtruded  itself  into  the  conduct  of  foreign  affairs.  In  1849, 
at  the  close  of  the  Mexican  War,  and  in  1851,  Narcisso 
Lopez  led  filibustering  expeditions  from  the  United  States  expeditions 
to  Cuba  to  free  the  island  from  the  power  of  Spain  and 
possibly  prepare  the  way  for  its  ultimate  annexation  to 
the  United  States  as  a  slave  state.  The  people  of  the  island  did 
not  rise  up  for  freedom  as  the  invaders  had  expected;  the  expedition 
failed,  and  with  some  of  his  men  Lopez  was  executed  on  the  public 
square  of  Havana.  Among  the  followers  of  Lopez  were  members  of 
several  of  the  leading  families  of  New  Orleans.  When  the  news  of  the 
execution  became  known  in  that  city  an  angry  mob  insulted  the  Spanish 
consul,  offered  insults  to  a  picture  of  the  Queen  of  Spain  and  even 
to  the  Spanish  flag,  for  which  indignities  the  Secretary  of  State,  Daniel 
Webster,  felt  constrained  to  offer  an  apology  to  the  Spanish  govern 
ment. 

Relations  with  Spain  were  again  strained  early  in  1854,  when  the 
Spanish  authorities  at  Havana,   Cuba,  seized  the  Black  Warrior,  a 
merchant  'vessel   of   the   United   States,   for   an   alleged    The  Black 
violation   of   the   commercial   regulations   of   that   port.    Warrior 
This  time  it  was  the  part  of  Spain  to  offer  an  apology;    epis( 
and  backed  by  the  enthusiastic  support  of  the  people  President  Pierce 
made  a  demand  on  Spain  for  reparation.     The  reply  of  the  Spaniards 
was  unsatisfactory,  but  fortunately  the  attention  of  the  people  of 
the  United  States  was  diverted  from  the  Spanish  situation  by  the 
absorbing   question   of   the   Kansas-Nebraska    Act.     Ultimately    the 
Black  Warrior  was  released. 


336     TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND  SECTIONAL  STRIFE 

In  the  fall  of  the  same  year,  1854,  it  was  again  Spain's  turn  to  take 
offense,  when  James  Buchanan,  United  States  minister  to  Great  Britain, 
The  pstend  J.  Y.  Mason,  United  States  minister  to  France,  and  Pierre 
Manifesto.  Soule,  United  States  minister  to  Spain,  met  at  Ostend, 
Belgium,  at  the  direction  of  President  Pierce,  and  prepared  and  sent 
to  the  President  a  paper  on  the  subject  of  Cuba,  called  the  Ostend 
Manifesto.  The  document  set  forth  the  argument  that  the  island 
of  Cuba  was  of  no  advantage  to  Spain,  but  that,  if  surrendered  to 
the  United  States  at  a  price  to  be  agreed  upon,  the  result  would  be 
of  benefit  to  both  countries  as  well  as  to  Cuba  herself.  The  claim 
was  made  that  "  self-preservation  is  the  first  law  of  nature,"  and  that 
if  Cuba  in  the  hands  of  Spain  endangered  the  peace  of  the  United 
States,  as  seemed  likely,  the  United  States,  "by  every  law,  human 
and  divine,"  would  be  justified  in  taking  it  by  force.  It  seems  never 
to  have  occurred  to  the  overzealous  ministers  that  Cuba  in  the  hands 
of  the  United  States,  because  of  the  disputes  over  slavery  that  would 
inevitably  follow,  would  be  a  greater  menace  to  the  peace  of  the  Union 
than  if  she  remained  in  the  hands  of  Spain. 

The  President  did  not  see  fit  to  act  in  accordance  with  the  advice. 
The  people  of  the  United  States  were  occupied  with  the  difficulties 
The  advice  arising  out  of  the  Kansas  question  and  had  no  heart  for 
rejected.  aggression  against  a  foreign  power,  and  Spain's  injured 

feelings  had  a  chance  to  subside. 

In  the  next  year,  1855,  William  Walker,  a  citizen  of  the  United 
States,  with  a  band  of  associates,  set  up  a  revolutionary  government 
Filibustering  m  Nicaragua  in  Central  America.  The  usurpers  signalized 
against  their  rule  by  the  almost  immediate  reintroduction  of  slav 

ery  into  the  country,  though  the  natives  had  abolished  it, 
and  held  their  ground  for  two  years  before  they  were  driven  out.  A 
second  expedition  proved  futile,  and  in  a  third,  against  Honduras,  he 
was  at  last  seized  and  executed  in  that  country  in  1860.  Although 
he  never  had  the  official  backing  of  the  United  States  government  in 
his  acts,  outside  nations  regarded  him  as  aided  and  abetted  by  the 
slaveholding  element  of  the  Southern  States  of  the  Union. 

ECONOMIC   CONDITIONS 

From  the  excitement  occasioned  in  foreign  and  domestic  affairs  by 
the  subject  of  slavery  in  the  decade  of  the  fifties  the  mistaken  impres- 
Laws  to  si°n  must  not  be  formed  that  the  people  of  the  United 

open  up  the      States  at  this   time   talked  and   thought  of  little  else. 
West.  rj-^e   development   of  the   ever-receding  frontier  in   the 

West  was  a  matter  of  general  concern.     We  have  seen  how  the  central 


QUARREL  OVER  SLAVERY  IN  THE  TERRITORIES        337 

government  in  the  first  half  of  the  century  refused  any  considerable 
aid  to  public  improvements,  and  how  the  states  themselves  went 
heavily  into  the  work,  only  to  repent  later  of  their  policy.  Congress 
began  to  change  its  course  slowly  after  1848,  not  at  first  by  constructing 
public  improvements  itself  but  by  giving  its  aid  to  the  states,  with  the 
requirement  that  the  states  in  turn  assist  the  private  companies 
engaged  in  the  improvements.  Under  the  "land  grant  railroad 
policy"  of  the  general  government  2,600,000  acres  were  voted  in  1850 
to  Illinois  for  the  Illinois  Central  Railroad  and  large  amounts  to  other 
states  to  build  the  Mobile  and  Ohio  Railroad.  In  the  next  fifteen  years 
20,000,000  acres  of  public  lands  were  disposed  of  in  the  interests  of 
western  railroads.  Other  laws  bestowed  on  the  states  thousands  of 
acres  of  "swamp  lands"  and  "saline  lands,"  to  be  used  as  the  states 
might  direct;  and  four  different  acts  bestowed  50,000,000  acres  of 
military  bounty  lands  on  old  soldiers. 

In  the  decade  from  1850  to  1860  the  total  value  of  all  farm  property, 
which  in  1850  was  $3,900,000,000,  doubled;  the  annual  cotton  crop, 
which  amounted  to  2,100,000  bales  in  1850,  almost  doubled    Agricultural 
in  the  same  interval,  while  the  annual  corn  crop  of  590,-    statistics' 
000,000    bushels    and    that    of    wheat,    which    reached     100,000,000 
bushels  in  1850,  increased  approximately  fifty  per  cent. 

Railroad  construction  went  on  in  every  section.     In  all  the  United 
States  from  1850  to  1860,  20,000  miles  of  railroad  were  constructed,  or 
four  times  as   many  miles  as  in   the  previous   decade.    Rapi(j 
Among  the  new  western  roads  were  the  Illinois  Central,    railroad 
the  Mobile  and  Ohio,   the  Chicago  and  Northwestern,    ' 
the  Chicago,  Burlington,  and  Quincy,  and  many  others,  all  richly 
endowed  with  the  government  lands.     The  trunk  lines  from  the  east 
were  at  the  same  time  making  their  way  over  the  Appalachian  Moun 
tains  in  their  progress  westward,  the  Erie  from  New  York  to  Buffalo, 
the  New  York  Central  from  New  York  to  Chicago,  the  Pennsylvania 
from  Philadelphia  to  Chicago,  and  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  from  Bal 
timore  to  Cincinnati  and  St.  Louis. 

The  growth  of  the  western  cities  was  magical.     Chicago,  which  had 
been  founded  as  a  fort  in  the  Indian  country  in  1804,  was  in  1833  still 

a  small  village  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  wooden  houses.    , 

T     ,  i  ,_  ^  i.j-.i  .  •  The  growth 

In  the  next  five  years,  as  a  result  of  the  prosperous  times    Of  Chicago 

of  Andrew  Jackson,  its  population  rose  to  4000;  but  its 
shipments  of  grain  in  1838  amounted  to  only  78  bushels  of  • 
wheat.  By  1860  it  numbered  109,000  inhabitants,  and  in  this  year  over 
the  new  lines  of  transportation  which  were  opening  up,  by  lakes,  canals, 
and  railroads,  it  shipped  11,000,000  bushels  of  wheat.  This  phenome- 


33S      TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND   SECTIONAL  STRIFE 

nal  advance  was  an  index  of  the  growth  of  the  entire  Northwest,  for 
which  Chicago  was  the  natural  receiving  and  distributing  center.  New 
York  City  profited  by  the  new  methods  of  communication  with  the 
West  and  increased  rapidly  in  wealth  and  population;  her  300,000  in 
habitants  in  1840  had  increased  to  800,000  in  1860.  The  total  popu 
lation  of  the  United  States  rose  from  17,000,000  in  1840  to  23,000,000 
in  1850  and  31,000,000  in  1860. 

The  development  of  the  country's  mineral  resources  kept  pace  with 
the  general  progress.  In  1810  the  average  annual  production  of  gold 
The  progress  was  $2ooo,  in  1820  $73,000,  in  1830  $564,000,  in  1840 
of  mining.  $1,000,000,  and  in  1850,  two  years  after  the  opening  of  the 
California  mines,  $50,000,000.  In  the  decade  from  1850  to  1860  the 
annual  production  of  gold  averaged  $55,000,000.  This  large  addition  to 
the  wealth  of  the  country  worked  mightily  for  prosperity.  Silver  pro 
duction  was  inconsiderable.  From  1850  to  1860  the  annual  production 
of  coal  and  of  pig  iron,  both  excellent  indices  of  general  .prosperity,, 
especially  along  manufacturing  lines,  advanced,  the  one  from  6,000,000 
tons  to  13,000,000  tons,  and  the  other  from  560,000  to  820,000  tons. 

Agricultural  development,  the  building  of  new  railroads  and  cities, 
and  the  progress  in  the  mining  industries  created  an  unusual  demand  for 
Immi  ation  laborers,  which  in  turn  induced  an  increase  in  immigration. 
Failure  of  the  potato  crop  in  Ireland  in  1846,  stern  repres 
sion  of  political  revolution  in  the  German  states  in  1848,  and  wars  and 
upheavals  in  other  parts  of  the  continent  of  Europe  contributed  to  the 
movement.  In  1820,  8000  immigrants  arrived  from  Europe,  23,000 
came  in  1830,  84,000  in  1840,  and  370,000  in  1850.  Each  year  of  the 
fifties  saw  an  increase,  until  in  1854  the  number  reached  425,000.  In 
the  decade  1850-1860,  2,700,000  immigrants,  mostly  Irish,  Germans, 
and  English,  entered  the  United  States,  the  Irish  generally  settling  in 
the  manufacturing  centers  of  the  East  or  seeking  work  on  the  canals 
and  railroads,  and  the  Germans  and  the  English  finding  their  way  to 
the  agricultural  sections  of  the  Middle  West.  Almost  all  the  new 
comers  cast  their  fortunes  with  the  Northern  States,  for  to  the  inde 
pendent  artisans  and  laborers  of  Europe  competition  with  enforced  black 
labor  was  unattractive. 

The  movement  was  a  continuation  of  that  by  which  the  country 
had  been  built  up  from  the  beginning.  Except  the  Indians,  all  the 
O  osition  inhabitants  of  the  United  States  are  immigrants  or  the 
to  immigra-  descendants  of  immigrants.  History  shows,  however, 
that  after  men  have  arrived  in  the  new  country  and  have 
enjoyed  its  freedom  and  opportunity  for  a  number  of  years,  they  fre 
quently  object  to  others  coming  to  enjoy  the  same  privileges.  The 


QUARREL  OVER  SLAVERY  IN  THE  TERRITORIES         339 

riots  against  the  immigrants  in  Andrew  Jackson's  time  illustrate  this 
fact,  and  from  1850  to  1860  fresh  riots  disclose  the  same  tendency.  The 
anti-foreigners  went  so  far  as  to  form  the  Know-Nothing  party,  which, 
as  we  have  seen,  placed  a  presidential  candidate  in  the  field  in  1856. 
The  party  won  a  few  local  and  state  elections  and  then  died.  The 
sober  second  thought  of  the  nation  revolted  at  the  idea  of  organized 
opposition  to  immigration.  The  moral  question  of  slavery  was  a  more 
substantial  issue  on  which  to  found  a  political  party. 

The  swelling  tide  of  prosperity  which  set  in  during  the  forties  con 
tinued  up  to  within  a  few  weeks  after  President  Buchanan  took  his 
seat,  and  then  suddenly  receded  in  the  financial  panic  of  The  financial 
1857.  Thousands  lost  their  fortunes  and  other  thousands  panic  of  1857- 
their  work.  It  was  the  panic  of  1837  over  again  on  a  somewhat  smaller 
scale,  brought  about  by  the  same  general  set  of  causes.  In  their 
prosperity  and  in  the  abundance  of  money  after  the  discoveries  of  gold 
in  California,  men  had  speculated  too  heavily  in  public  lands,  in  rail 
roads,  in  city  real  estate,  in  mineral-bearing  lands,  and  in  many  other 
lines  of  investment.  They  had  gone  too  far  and  the  inevitable  crash 
overtook  them. 

While  the  people  were  gradually  recovering  from  the  effects  of  this 
panic,  providential  discoveries  of  new  mineral  deposits  brought 
encouragement  to  the  whole  nation.  Petroleum  or  crude  The  discovery 
oil  was  found  in  a  drilled  well  at  Titusville,  Pennsylvania,  of  petroleum, 
in  1859.  The  first  well  was  not  a  flowing  well,  but  the  oil  was  pumped 
from  it  at  the  rate  of  twenty-five  barrels  per  day,  which  was  equal  to 
a  daily  income  of  $1000.  Soon  the  Funk  well,  the  first  flowing  well, 
was  struck.  "Funk  was  a  poor  man  when  the  well  was  struck.  It 
was  struck  in  June,  1861,  and  commenced  flowing  to  the  astonishment 
of  all  oil  borers  in  the  neighborhood  at  the  rate  of  two  hundred  and 
fifty  barrels  per  day.  Such  a  prodigal  supply  upset  all  calculations, 
and  it  was  confidently  predicted  that  it  would  cease.  The  oil,  however, 
continued  flowing  with  but  little  variation  for  fifteen  months  and  then 
stopped,  but  not  before  Funk  became  a  very  rich  man.  Long  before 
the  Funk  well  had  given  out  there  were  new  sensations." 

Along  Oil  Creek  in  Pennsylvania,  where  the  discoveries  were  made,, 
Oil  Creek,  Franklin,  Titusville,  and  other  towns  sprang  up  out  of  the 
wilderness,    and   fifty   million   gallons   of   oil   were   soon    A  great 
produced   annually.     Similar   discoveries   were   made   in    industry- 
other  parts  of  the  country.     It  was  through  a  monopoly  of  the  petro 
leum  industry,  built  up  by  the  Standard  Oil  Company,  that  the  Rocke 
feller  fortune  has  been  created,  the  largest  private  fortune  in  the  world, 
amounting,  according  to  one  estimate,  to  $1,000,000,000. 


340     TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND  SECTIONAL  STRIFE 

In   the  same  year,  1859,  there  was  discovered  in  Colorado  the 
New  gold  and    Gregory  lode  of  gold,  and  in  Nevada  the  famous  Com- 
.  silver  mines.     stock  lode,   the  latter  an  immensely  rich  vein  of  gold 
and  silver,  which  in  six  years  yielded  $50,000,000. 

GENERAL  REFERENCES 

RHODES,  United  States,  I-II;  MCMASTER,  United  States,  VIII;  ALLEN  JOHNSON, 
Stephen  A.  Douglas;  SCHURZ,  Henry  Clay,  II,  315-414;  HARDING,  Orations,  267-291. 

SPECIAL  TOPICS 

1.  THE  UNDERGROUND  RAILROAD.    Epochs,  VII,  110-115;  W.  H.  SIEBERT,  Under 
ground  Railroad;  M.  G.  McDouGAL,  Fugitive  Slaves;  RHODES,  United  States,  II,  74-77, 
and  361-365;  Contemporaries,  IV,  80-96. 

2.  THE  CRIME  AGAINST  KANSAS.    VILLARD,  John  Brown,  79-266;  L.  W.  SPRING, 
Kansas,  37-257;  Old  South  Leaflets,  IV,  83;  Epochs,  VII,  164-168;  Contemporaries, 
IV,  97-121;  SPARKS,  Expansion,  351-365;  HARDING,  Orations,  292-308. 

3.  THE  LINCOLN-DOUGLAS  DEBATES.     NICOLAY  and  HAY,  Abraham  Lincoln,  II, 
135-170;  G.  H.  PUTNAM,  ED.,  The  Political  Debates  Between  Abraham  Lincoln  and 
Stephen  A.  Douglas;  HARDING,  Orations,  309-341;  Old  South  Leaflets,  IV,  85;  RHODES, 
United  States,  II,  320-338. 

ILLUSTRATIVE  MATERIAL 

LONGFELLOW,  Poems  on  Slavery;  LOWELL,  Stanzas  on  Freedom  (Wendell  Phillips, 
To  William  Lloyd  Garrison,  and  On  the  Capture  of  Fugitive  Slaves  near  Washington); 
STOWE,  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin;  WHITTIER,  Ichabod,  Stanzas  for  the  Times  — 1850,  and 
A  Sabbath  Scene;  G.  W.  BAGBY,  The  Old  Virginia  Gentleman  and  Other  Sketches. 

SUGGESTIVE  QUESTIONS 

Why  was  California's  application  for  statehood  called  "  impertinent "  ?  Trace  the 
part  of  Henry  Clay  in  each  presidential  contest  from  1824  to  1848.  Were  Clay  and 
Webster  right  in  pushing  the  Compromise  of  1850?  State  the  difference  between 
nullification  in  South  Carolina  and  the  personal  liberty  laws  of  the  Northern  States. 
Why  was  the  Whig  party  a  failure?  Why  did  the  Know-No  thing  party  fail?  Give 
the  causes  for  the  failure  of  the  Kansas-Nebraska  Act.  Explain  why  the  Dred  Scott 
Decision  was  incompatible  with  popular  sovereignty.  Why  was  it  a  mistake  for  the 
Supreme  Court  to  pass  on  the  question  of  territorial  slavery?  Why  was  the  Ostend 
Manifesto  an  affront  to  Spain?  Ought  Fillmore  to  have  refused  to  sign  the  fugitive 
slave  bill?  Pierce  the  Kansas-Nebraska  bill?  and  Buchanan  tc  have  refused  to  send  the 
Lecompton  Constitution  to  Congress?  How  do  you  account  for  the  wave  of  economic 
prosperity  that  swept  the  country  after  the  Mexican  War  down  to  1857?  What  were 
the  leading  issues  before  the  people  in  the  presidential  campaigns  of  1852  and  1856  ? 


CHAPTER  XXII 
SECESSION 

JOHN  BROWN'S   RAID 

ON  Sunday  night,  the  sixteenth  of  October,  1859,  John  Brown,  the 
anti-slavery  leader  of  Kansas,  backed  by  the  support  of  New  England 
sympathizers,  led  a  band  of  twenty-two  men  across  the 
Potomac  River  from  the  Maryland  shore  to  Harper's  Ferry, 
Virginia,  and  made  a  daring  but  unsuccessful  attempt  to    per's  Ferry, 
free  the  slaves  of  the  surrounding  region.     Four  of  the    Vv&rna. 
inhabitants  of  the  town  and  ten  of  the  raiders  were  killed  in  the  ensuing 
encounter  and  Brown  himself  and  six  of  his  confederates  were  arrested, 
while  five  others  made  their  escape.     Not  a  slave  left  his  master  to  join 
the  would-be  deliverers. 

Greater  excitement  has  seldom  stirred  the  nation,  both  North  and 
South,  than  that  which  flamed  forth  the  instant  this  startling  intelli 
gence  spread  over  the  country.  In  the  North  anti-slavery  Brown's 
enthusiasm  was  carried  almost  to  the  point  of  fanaticism,  own  defense- 
as  Brown's  words  in  defense  of  his  acts  were  reported.  As  he  lay 
with  wounds  gaping  and  bleeding,  he  said  to  a  newspaper  reporter:  "I 
hold  that  the  Golden  Rule  'Do  unto  others  as  you  would  that  others 
should  do  unto  you '  applies  to  all  that  would  help  others  to  gain  their 
liberty.  ...  I  want  you  to  understand  that  I  respect  the  rights  of  the 
poorest  and  weakest  of  the  colored  people  oppressed  by  the  slave  sys 
tem,  just  as  much  as  I  do  those  of  the  most  wealthy  and  powerful.  .  .  . 
I  wish  to  say,  furthermore,  that  you  had  better,  all  you  people  at  the 
South,  prepare  yourselves  for  a  settlement  of  this  question  that  must 
come  up  for  settlement  sooner  than  you  are  prepared  for  it.  The 
sooner  you  are  prepared  the  better.  You  may  dispose  of  me  very  easily. 
I  am  nearly  disposed  of  now;  but  this  question  is  still  to  be  settled, 
this  negro  question,  I  mean;  the  end  of  that  is  not  yet." 

The  South,  roused  to  more  ardent  defense  of  its  system,  denounced 
Brown  as  worse  than  murderer,  as  one  who  would  incite  the  slaves  to 
insurrection  and  expose   the  whites  to   the  horrors  of  a    His 
servile  war.     He  was  charged  with  treason  and  conspir-    punishment, 
ing  with  others  to  rebel,  and  murder  in  the  first  degree,  and  after  an 
exciting  trial  at  Charlestown,  Virginia,  he  was  found  guilty  and  hanged. 

34i 


342      TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND  SECTIONAL  STRIFE 

The  opponents  of  slavery  rallied  to  the  standard  of  Harriet  Beecher 
Stowe  and  John  Brown,  and  attacked  slavery  with  unsparing  vigor. 
Arguments  ^-ts  revolting  features  were  held  up  to  public  condemnation 
against  as  never  before.  Now  it  was  the  barbarity  of  the  punish 

ment  of  offending  slaves  that  was  attacked,  now  the 
inhumanity  of  the  slave  auction,  the  separation  of  families,  the  brutal 
hunt  for  the  runaway,  and  the  cruelties  and  illegalities  of  the  foreign 
slave  trade,  which  was  still  openly  carried  on  in  defiance  of  the  law. 
Such  descriptions  of  a  slave  ship  from  Africa  as  the  following  depicted 
conditions  against  which  humanity  revolted.  "The  scene  between 
decks  was  revolting.  Stowed  in  sitting  posture,  with  their  knees  drawn 
up  close  to  their  breasts,  were  over  five  hundred  human  beings,  whose 
skin  was  black,  mostly  children  and  young  persons,  and  some  women. 
So  close  were  they  packed  that  they  could  not  move,  and  could  hardly 
breathe." 

The  Southerners  pointed  out  the  fairer  aspects  of  the  system,  how 
the  negroes  in  slavery  were  more  civilized  and  Christianized  than  were 
The  defense  their  brethren  in  the  wilds  of  Africa,  how  they  were 
of  slavery.  cared  for  by  their  masters  and  were  generally  satisfied  with 
their  lot;  how,  though  naturally  prone  to  laziness  and  theft,  they  were 
forced  by  slavery  into  useful  industrial  occupations,  to  which  otherwise 
they  would  not  submit;  how  the  New  Testament  enjoined  upon 
slaves  obedience  to  their  masters;  and  how  the  very  prosperity  of  the 
Southern  States  was  bound  up  with  slavery  as  an  economic  necessity. 
Whereas  in  the  early  days  of  the  republic  many  of  the  "  Fathers," 
even  in  the  South,  had  deplored  the  institution  of  slavery,  although 
seeing  no  practical  way  of  dispensing  with  it,  the  generation  of  South 
erners  of  1860  defended  it  with  ardor  upon  both  moral  and  economic 
grounds. 

An  influential  book,  "The  Impending  Crisis  in  the  South,  How  to 
Meet  It,"  written  by  Hinton  Rowan  Helper,  a  poor  white  of  North 
Helper's  Carolina,  made  a  startling  comparison  of  the  economic 

"impending  results  of  slavery  and  of  freedom.  The  Southern  States 
were  shown  to  be  even  farther  behind  the  states  of  the 
North  in  industries  and  commerce  than  in  1832,  and  "the  causes  which 
have  impeded  the  progress  and  prosperity  of  the  South  .  .  .  may 
be  traced  to  a  common  source  —  slavery."  An  illustration  shows  the 
drift  of  the  argument.  Helper  stated  that  when  the  first  census  was 
taken  in  1790,  New  York  had  a  population  of  340,000  and  Virginia 
740,000,  while  sixty  years  later  New  York  numbered  3,000,000  and  Vir 
ginia  1,400,000.  In  1791  the  exports  of  the  northern  state  equaled 
$2,500,000  and  those  of  the  southern  state  $3,100,000;  in  1852 


SECESSION  343 

those  of  the  former  state  amounted  to  $87,000,000  and  those  of  the 
latter  to  $2,700,000.  Although  in  the  earlier  year  the  imports  of  the 
two  states  were  about  equal,  those  of  the  northern  state  in  1853 
reached  $178,000,000  and  those  of  Virginia  only  $400,000.  The  prod 
ucts  of  mining,  manufacturing,  and  of  the  mechanic  arts  in  the  one 
case  were  valued  in  1850  at  $237,000,000  and  in  the  other  at  $37,000,- 
ooo;  in  the  same  year  the  real  and  personal  property  in  Virginia, 
excluding  slaves,  was  slightly  over  $390,000,000,  and  in  New  York, 
where  there  were  no  slaves,  $1,080,000,000.  New  York  City  alone 
was  worth  more  than  the  whole  state  of  Virginia. 

Helper  called  upon  the  non-slaveholding  whites  of  the  South  to  unite 
in  a  political  party  of  their  own  and  to  work  for  the  definite  abolition 
of  the  system,  which  so  retarded  their  section.     "And    His  call  for 
now,  sirs,  we  have  thus  laid  down  our  ultimatum.     What    the  abolition 
are  you  going  to  do  about  it?     Something  dreadful,  of 
course!      Perhaps  you  will  dissolve  the  Union  again.     Do  it,  if  you 
dare!     Our  motto,  and  we  would  have  you  to  understand  it,  is  'the 
abolition  of  slavery  and  the  perpetuation  of  the  American  union.'     If 
by  any  means  you  do  succeed  in  your  treasonable  attempts  to  take 
the  South  out  of  the  Union  to-day,  we  will  bring  her  back  to-morrow." 

With  the  written  indorsement  of  sixty-eight  Congressmen  of  the 
new  Republican  party,  this  book  was  circulated  as  a  political  campaign 
document  by  the  Republicans  in  the  state  campaigns  The  influence 
of  1859.  It  aroused  such  fiery  opposition  among  the  of  the  book. 
Democrats  that  in  the  House  of  Representatives  in  Washington  the 
choice  of  the  Speaker  in  1 859-1 8$p*-' hinged  upon  indorsement  or 
non-indorsement  of  the  book. 

THE  PRESIDENTIAL  ELECTION  OF   1860 

Swayed  by  the  undying  debate  over  slavery,  the  country  again 
faced  the  necessity  of  electing  a  President.     The  leading  question  in 
dispute  between  the  two  parties  was  still  how  to  deal  with    The 
slavery  in  the  territories.     On  this  point  the  Democratic    Democratic 
party  split  into  two  irreconcilable  factions,  the  extreme    (          tion' 
southern  faction  on  the  one  hand,  which  stood  firmly  for  the  principle 
of  the  Dred  Scott  Decision  that  slavery  went  into  the  territories  with 
the  Constitution,  and  the  followers  of  Stephen  A.  Douglas  on  the  other, 
who  favored  allowing  the  people  in  the  territories  themselves  to  decide 
whether  or  not  they  would  have  slavery.     After  the  regular  Demo 
cratic  convention  of  the  year  had  broken  up  in  a  bitter  quarrel,  the 
southern  faction  named  for  President  John  C.  Breckinridge  of  Ken 
tucky,  while  the  other  faction  gave  their  nomination  to  Douglas. 
23 


344      TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND   SECTIONAL  STRIFE 

The  split  greatly  elated  the  Republicans,  who  came  together  in  a 
harmonious  convention,  nominated  Abraham  Lincoln  of  Illinois,  and 
The  declared  again  as  in  1856  for  the  Missouri  Compromise 

Republican  plan  of  congressional  control  of  slavery  in  the  territories. 
on*  It  was  generally  recognized  that  William  H.  Seward  of 
New  York  deserved  the  Republican  nomination,  but  he  was  passed 
over,  as  he  had  been  four  years  earlier,  for  the  reason  that  his  promi 
nence  had  brought  him  too  many  enemies  to  lead  a  cause  which  de 
pended  for  its  success  upon  winning  new  recruits.  To  the  enunciation 
of  the  "higher  law,"  which,  from  the  moment  Seward  first  gave  utter 
ance  to  it  in  1850,  had  been  constantly  gaining  adherents,  he  had  added 
that  of  the  "  irrepressible  conflict,"  shortly  after  the  Lecompton  struggle 
in  Congress.  By  this  phrase  he  meant  that  the  contest  between  slavery 
and  freedom  was  bound  to  go  on  till  the  nation  was  all  free  or  all  slave. 
This  also  was  the  position  of  Lincoln  in  his  address  to  the  Republican 
state  convention  of  Illinois  that  nominated  him  for  Senator  against 
Douglas.  "'A  house  divided  against  itself  cannot  stand.'  I  believe 
this  government  cannot  endure  permanently  half  slave  and  half  free. 
I  do  not  expect  the  Union  to  be  dissolved  —  I  do  not  expect  the  house 
to  fall  —  but  I  do  expect  it  will  cease  to  be  divided.  It  will  become 
all  one  thing  or  all  the  other." 

A  fourth  party,  known  as  the  Constitutional  Union  party,  the  dis- 
The  Consti-  tinguishing  characteristic  of  which  was  its  refusal  to 
tutionai  commit  itself  on  the  great  question  of  the  day,  nominated 

>n  party.       John  ^  of  Tennessee> 

So  far  as  slavery  itself  was  concerned,  the  campaign  debate  cen 
tered  about  the  principles  of  the  Missouri  Compromise,  the  Kansas- 
The  threat  Nebraska  Act,  and  the  Dred  Scott  Decision;  but  the  most 
of  secession,  exciting  phase  of  the  issue  concerned  secession  from  the 
Union  and  the  formation  of  a  separate  southern  republic,  which  the 
Southerners  threatened  to  carry  out  if  a  Black  Republican  should  be 
elected  President. 

The  reasons  for  such  a  radical  step  were  many.  The  Southerners 
avowed  that  a  victory  of  the  party,  the  leaders  of  which  denounced 
Arguments  slavery  as  "a  relic  of  barbarism"  and  stood  for  the  prin- 
for  secession.  ciples  of  the  "higher  law,"  the  " irrepressible  conflict," 
and  the  "house  divided  against  itself,"  would . inevitably  lead  to 
more  personal  liberty  laws,  more  open  repudiation  of  the  Dred  Scott 
Decision,  more  attempts  to  exclude  slavery  from  the  territories,  and 
more  John  Brown  raids,  until  the  existence  of  slavery  even  in  the 
states  would  be  threatened  and  the  great  agricultural  interests  de 
pendent  upon  it  be  endangered.  When  it  is  realized  that  the  crops 


SECESSION  345 

of  cotton,  tobacco,  and  sugar  were  intimately  connected  with  the 
institution  of  slavery,  that  the  prices  of  these  crops  were  high  and 
constantly  advancing,  and  that  the  exportations  of  cotton  alone  consti 
tuted  in  value  almost  one-third  of  the  total  exports  of  the  entire  country 
in  1860,  the  force  of  the  argument  is  easily  perceived.  At  Virginia 
prices,  the  value  of  the  four  million  slaves  of  the  South  was  estimated 
at  $2,800,000,000.  To  save  this  vast  investment  and  to  render  the 
staple  crops  secure,  was,  in  the  minds  of  many  Southerners,  a  com 
mercial  necessity,  exceeding  in  importance  the  perpetuation  of  any 
political  union.  A  constitutional  basis  for  secession  was  furnished 
by  the  strict  construction  arguments  of  the  Virginia  and  Kentucky 
Resolutions,  as  elaborated  by  Calhoun. 

The  Southerners  believed  that  there  could  be  no  doubt  of  the  success 
ful  accomplishment  of  secession.     In  the  first  place,  they  were  confident 
that  Great  Britain,  where  hundreds  of  cotton  mills  were    The  hopes  of 
dependent  on  American  cotton,  would  assist  the  new  repub-    the  seces- 
lic,  in  order  to  make  sure  of  its  usual  supply  of  this  raw 
material.     In  the  second  place,  they  counted  on  receiving  aid  from  their 
fellow-Democrats  in  the  Northern  States. 
In  the  third  place,  they  believed  that  aid 
would  come  to  them  from  the  slaveholders 
of  the  Border  States,  out  of  devotion  to  the 
common  cause  of  slavery.     In  the  fourth 
place,  they  had  a  faint  hope  that  the  states 
of  the  Northwest  were  still  sufficiently  de 
pendent  on  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi 
River  as  an  outlet  to  a  market,  to  follow 
the  section  which  controlled  the  mouth  of 
that  river  into  secession. 

Northerners  piled  up  arguments  against 
secession,  though  the  temper  on  both  sides 
soon  reached  such  a  heat  that  argument  counted  for  little.     They 
pointed  out,  like  Clay  and  Webster  before  them,  that  se-    Arguments 
cession  would  plunge  the  country  into  civil   war.     They    against 
prophesied  that  as  soon  as  the  first  blows  were  struck,  the 
northern  sympathizers  with  the  South  would  be  swept  off  their  feet  in 
the  prevailing  enthusiasm  for  the  Union,  and  that  it  was  a  delusion 
for  the  Southerners  to  look  for  much  help  in  that  quarter.     They  at 
tempted  to  show  to  their  Southern  brethren  that  a  government  built 
up  on  the  principle  of  secession  would  not  rest  on  an  enduring  foun 
dation,  since  the  time  might  come  when  it  would  lose  its  own  states, 
one  after  another,  by  the  same  disintegrating  process.     What  right, 


346      TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND   SECTIONAL  STRIFE 

they  asked,  had  Louisiana  and  Florida  to  secede,  brought  into  the 
Union  by  the  common  treasure?  What  right  had  Texas,  secured  to 
the  Union  by  the  blood  of  the  soldiers  of  every  state?  The  constitu 
tionality  of  secession  was  denied  in  toto. 

As  a  result  of  the  balloting  in  November,  the  country  gave  1,860,000 

votes  to  Lincoln,  1,376,000  to  Douglas,  850,000  to  Breckinridge,  and 

Lincoln  590,000  to  Bell.     In  the  electoral  colleges  there  were  180 

votes  for  Lincoln,  12  for  Douglas,  39  for  Bell,  and  72  for 

Breckinridge. 

THE    CONFEDERATE    STATES    OF   AMERICA 

The  South  began  at  once  to  carry  out  its  threat.  As  in  1832  in  the 
less  serious  controversy  with  the  central  government  over  the  tariff, 
The  seces-  " Brave  little  South  Carolina"  led  the  way,  followed  in 
sion  of  South  order,  before  President  Lincoln's  inauguration,  by  Missis- 
Carolina,  •  •  T71  -J  All,  O  '  T  •  •  J  ^ 

December  sippi,  Florida,  Alabama,  Georgia,  Louisiana,  and  Texas. 
20,  i860.  South  Carolina's  ordinance  of  secession,  December  20, 

1860,  was  brief.  "An  Ordinance  to  dissolve  the  Union  between  the 
state  of  South  Carolina  and  the  other  states  united  with  her  under  the 
compact  entitled  'The  Constitution  of  the  United  States  of  America': 
We  the  people  of  the  state  of  South  Carolina,  in  convention  assembled, 
do  declare  and  ordain,  and  it  is  hereby  declared  and  ordained,  that  the 
Ordinance  adopted  by  us  in  convention  on  the  twenty-third  day  of 
May,  in  the  year  of  our  Lord  one  thousand  seven  hundred  and  eighty- 
eight,  whereby  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  was  ratified,  and 
also  all  acts  and  parts  of  acts  of  the  general  assembly  of  this  state 
ratifying  amendments  of  the  said  Constitution,  are  hereby  repealed; 
and  that  the  union  now  subsisting  between  South  Carolina  and  other 
states  under  the  name  of  the  'United  States  of  America'  is  hereby 
dissolved."  The  ordinances  of  secession  in  other  states  were  similar 
to  that  of  South  Carolina. 

Delegates  from  the  first  six  states  to  secede,  joined  in  a  few  days 
by  delegates  from  Texas,  assembled  in  convention  in  Montgomery, 
The  Confed-  Alabama,  February  4,  1861,  and  in  the  remarkably  short 
erate  States  space  of  four  days  adopted  a  Provisional  Constitution, 
of  America.  ^^  Qn  March  ii  a  Permanent  Constitution  for  the 
Confederate  States  of  America.  Jefferson  Davis  of  Mississippi  was 
chosen  the  first  President  of  the  new  Confederacy,  under  the  Provisional 
Constitution,  and  Alexander  H.  Stephens  of  Georgia  the  first  Vice 
President.  Among  the  strongest  members  of  the  Southern  cabinet 
were  Judah  P.  Benjamin  of  Louisiana,  who  at  different  times  held  the 
posts  of  Attorney  General,  Secretary  of  War,  and  Secretary  of  State, 


SECESSION  347 

C.  G.  Memminger  of  South  Carolina,  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  and 
John  H.  Reagan  of  Texas,  the  Postmaster  General.  The  temporary 
capital  of  the  Confederacy  was  at  Montgomery,  Alabama,  but  the 
permanent  capital  was  later  located  at  Richmond,  Virginia. 

The  Constitution  of  the  Confederate  States  is  an  interesting  docu 
ment,  both  because  it  states  plainly  the  Southern  point  of  view  on  the 
political  questions  of  its  day,  and  because,  with  the  sue-  The 

cesses  and  failures  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States    Confederate 

Constitution, 
as  a  guide,  it  is  in  some  respects  superior  to  that  document. 

Slavery  was  made  lawful  in  every  state  and  in  the  territories,  internal 
improvements  .at  the  expense  of  the  central  government  and  a  pro 
tective  tariff  were  forbidden,  the  doctrines  of  strict  construction  and 
states'  rights  was  adopted,  though  the  extreme  steps  of  nullification 
and  secession  went  unnamed.  The  President  was  to  serve  for  a  single 
term  of  six  years  and,  in  addition  to  the  ordinary  veto  power,  was  to 
have  the  power  of  vetoing  items  in  appropriation  bills;  the  members 
of  his  cabinet  were  to  have  the  right  to  sit  on  the  floor  of  the  two  houses 
of  Congress  and  to  take  part  in  debate,  though  not  to  vote.  Each  law 
was  to  relate  to  but  one  subject,  that  is,  "riders"  on  appropriation  bills 
were  to  be  impossible.  One  of  the  final  clauses  contains  the  interest 
ing  provision,  " The  Confederate  States  may  acquire  new  territory." 

Three  weeks  before  South  Carolina  seceded,  President  Buchanan, 
in  his  annual  message  to  Congress,  made  one  of  the  best  arguments 
against  the  right  of  secession  which  had  ever  been  BUChanan's 
advanced,  and  ended  with  the  impotent  conclusion  that,  weakness  in 
although  secession  was  unconstitutional,  the  President,  as 
chief  executive  officer  of  the  country  and  the  commander-in-chief  of 
its  military  and  naval  forces,  had  no  power  to  stop  it.  As  state  after 
state  followed  South  Carolina,  .he  took  no  action;  when  South  Caro 
lina  fired  on  a  government  vessel,  the  Star  of  the  West,  which  was 
sent  to  take  provisions  to  the  Union  soldiers  in  Fort  Sumter,  in  the 
harbor  of  Charleston,  still  held  by  the  United  States,  he  offered  no 
resistance;  and  he  retained  in  the  cabinet  certain  Southerners,  who 
were  suspected  of  using  their  official  position  in  aid  of  the  South.  At 
this  juncture  the  union-loving  men  of  the  North  sighed,  "Oh!  for  an 
hour  of  Andrew  Jackson!"  Never  was  a  President  more  glad  to  lay 
down  the  reins  of  office  than  was  James  Buchanan  on  March  4,  1861. 
The  one  note  pleasing  to  northern  sympathizers,  amid  all  the  discord 
of  Buchanan's  last  days,  was  the  message  of  the  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury,  John  A.  Dix,  to  a  subordinate  in  New  Orleans,  "If  any 
man  attempts  to  haul  down  the  American  flag,  shoot  him  on  the 
spot." 


348     TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND  SECTIONAL  STRIFE 

As  in  the  crises  of  1820,  1832,  and  1850,  proposals  of  compromise 
were  made  to  conciliate  the  disaffected  sections.  These  plans  were 
Compromise  numbered  by  the  score,  but  the  one  that  received  most 
proposed.  attention  was  brought  forward  by  Senator  Crittenden  of 
Kentucky,  the  successor  of  Henry  Clay  in  the  United  States  Senate. 
He  proposed  to  amend  the  Constitution  in  the  following  respects: 
first,  that  the  Missouri  Compromise  line  of  36°  30'  be  restored  and 
extended  to  California,  all  the  territory  north  of  the  line  to  be  free 
and  all  the  territory  south  of  it  to  be  slave;  second,  that  the  United 
States  guarantee  to  the  slaveholders  remuneration  for  fugitive  slaves 
lost  in  the  North;  and  third,  that  the  United  States  formally  renounce 
forever  the  right  to  interfere  with  slavery  in  the  states.  A  peace 
conference  of  one  hundred  and  thirty-three  commissioners  from 
twenty-three  states,  assembling  in  Washington  with  ex-President 
Tyler  in  the  chair,  proposed  still  other  plans.  Committees  of  the  two 
houses  of  Congress  set  to  work,  and  finally  the  Senate  and  the  House  of 
Representatives  passed  and  transmitted  to  the  states  for  ratification 
that  part  of  the  Crittenden  proposals  protecting  slavery  in  the  states 
from  the  action  of  the  Federal  government.  By  common  agreement 
since  1789  the  Federal  government  had  uniformly  refrained  from  all 
interference  with  slavery  in  the  states,  so  that  the  new  proposition  did 
not  involve  any  radical  innovation;  the  measure  merely  sought  to 
base  on  the  more  reliable  foundation  of  a  constitutional  amendment 
that  which  till  then  had  been  a  voluntary  practice.  Three  northern 
states  had  given  the  amendment  their  approval,  when  war  intervened 
to  put  an  end  to  all  measures  of  conciliation. 

The  President-elect  discouraged  compromise.  He  believed  that 
he  and  his  party,  at  the  outset  of  the  new  administration,  ought  not  to 
desert  the  platform  principle  of  territorial  freedom  on 
elect  Lincoln  which  they  had  won  the  election.  Such  a  change  would 
opposes  tend  to  bring  the  party  into  contempt  as  a  party  of  no 

fixed  principles,  would  alienate  adherents,  weaken  the 
administration  at  the  very  time  when  it  most  needed  support,  and 
leave  the  way  open  to  future  strife  over  slavery  in  the  territories. 
Lincoln  wrote:  "Entertain  no  proposition  for  a  compromise  in  regard 
to  the  extension  of  slavery.  The  instant  you  do  they  have  us  under 
again:  all  our  labor  is  lost,  and  sooner  or  later  must  be  done  over 
again.  .  .  .  Have  none  of  it.  The  tug  has  to  come,  and  better  now 
than  later." 

While  Lincoln  was  thus  leading  his  party  against  the  delays  and 
compromises  of  the  Democrats,  for  it  was  mainly  the  northern  Demo 
crats  who  were  engaged  in  bringing  forward  the  conciliatory  proposals, 


EXPLANATION 
|  [  Loyal 

|  |  Early  Secession 

~j  Later  Secession 
|  [  Slave  States 

~]  Free  States 
|  ]  Territories,  all  open  to  Slavery 

TIT 


107  Longitude      102  West 


SECESSION  349 

Jefferson  Davis  was  leading  the  Southern  States  in  their  equally  mo 
mentous  decision  against  compromise.     Surely  no  Presi-    present 
dent  ever  faced  more  important  issues  or  met  them  more    Davis  opposes 
squarely  than  did  Presidents  Lincoln  and  Davis. 

GENERAL  REFERENCES 

RHODES,  United  States,  II;  NICOLAY  and  HAY,  Abraham  Lincoln,  II-III;  MORSE, 
Abraham  Lincoln,  I;  F.  BANCROFT,  William  II.  Seward,  I;  HARDING,  Orations,  342- 
357;  FIXE,  Presidential -Campaign  of  1860. 

SPECIAL  TOPICS 

1.  JOHN  BROWN,  Old  South  Leaflets,  IV,  84;  EPOCHS,  VII,  177-194;  FITE,  Presi 
dential  Campaign  of  1860,  1-32;  VILLARD,  John  Brown;  F.  B.  SANBORN,  John  Brown; 
Contemporaries,  IV,  144-150;  HILL,  Decisive  Battles,  65-106. 

2.  ARGUMENTS  FOR  AND  AGAINST    SLAVERY.     Epochs,  VI,   77~86;    FITE,  Presi 
dential  Campaign  of  1860,  33-91 ;  Contemporaries,  IV,  59-79. 

3.  ARGUMENTS  FOR  AND  AGAINST  SECESSION.     Epochs,  VIII,  14-1?;  FITE,  Presi 
dential  Campaign  of  1860,  162-197;  Contemporaries,  IV,  164-179;  Epochs,  VIII,  14-17; 
HARDING,  Orations,  362-369. 

4.  THE  PRESIDENTIAL  ELECTION  or  1860.     FITE,  Presidential  Campaign  of  1860; 
Contemporaries,  IV,  151-163;  Epochs,  VIII,  3-13;  E.  STANWOOD,  Presidency,  279-297; 
NICOLAY  and  HAY,  Abraham  Lincoln,  II,  216-295. 

ILLUSTRATIVE   MATERIAL 

E.  C.  STEDMAN,  How  Old  Brown  Took  Harper's  Ferry;  WHITTIER,  Brown  of  Ossa- 
•watomie;  HOLMES,  Brother  Jonathan's  Lament  for  Sister  Caroline. 

SUGGESTIVE  QUESTIONS 

Give  the  moral,  Biblical,  and  economic  arguments  for  and  against  slavery.  Why 
did  the  politicians  of  the  Republican  party  judge  that  Lincoln  would  be  a  better  leader 
in  1860  than  Seward?  How  did  Stephen  A.  Douglas  help  elect  Lincoln?  What  can 
you  say  in  justification  of  the  secession  of  the  Southern  States?  Why  were  the  Con 
federates  able  to  make  their  Constitution  so  quickly?  Point  out  any  respects  in 
tvhich  the  Confederate  Constitution  was  superior  to  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States.  What  were  the  leading  issues  in  current  politics  before  the  people  in  the 
presidential  campaign  of  1860?  Why  was  the  South  alarmed  over  the  election  of  a 
Republican  President  in  1860? 


CHAPTER   XXIII 
THE   CIVIL  WAR 

THE  FIRST  YEAR  OF  WAR,   1861 

THE  inaugural  address  of  President  Lincoln  was  awaited  by  the 
nation  with  intense  interest.  It  was  known  that  the  new  President 
Lincoln's  was  °PP°sed  to  compromise  and  that  he  had  openly 
inaugural  exerted  his  influence  against  such  measures,  but  the 
address.  country  waited  to  see  whether  he  would  maintain  that 

position  with  all  it   involved,  when  he   took  official   charge  of   the 

government,  or  would  offer  some 
compromise  measures  of  his  own 
to  preserve  the  peace.  The  ad 
dress  proved  to  be  a  calm  and  dig 
nified  statement  of  the  northern 
side  of  the  dispute,  with  no  sug 
gestion  of  compromise.  The 
President  affirmed  that  he  would 
not  interfere  with  slavery  in  the 
states  but  that  he  would  defend 
the  forts  and  other  property  of  the 
United  States  in  the  South  and 
would  collect  the  tariff.  If  there 
was  a  quarrel,  he  would  not  be  the 
aggressor.  "  In  your  hands,  my  dis 
satisfied  fellow-countrymen,  and 
not  in  mine,  is  the  momentous 
issue  of  civil  war.  The  government 
will  not  assail  you.  You  can  have 
no  conflict  without  being  your- 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  selves  the  aggressors.  You  have  no 

oath  registered  in  Heaven  to  de 
stroy  the  government,  while  I  shall  have  the  most  solemn  one  to  '  pre 
serve,  protect,  and  defend  it.'" 

Lincoln's  cabinet  was  one  of  the  strongest  in  the  history  of  the  gov 
ernment,  comparing  favorably  even  with  that  of  Washington  in  his  first 


THE  CIVIL  WAR  .  351 

administration.     The  President  gave  the  leading  places  to  his  five 
rivals  for  the  Republican  presidential  nomination  the  pre-    The  cabinet 
ceding  year.    William  H.  Seward,  Senator  from  New  York,    of  President 
became  Secretary  of  State;  Salmon  P.  Chase,  ex-Senator      mc 
from  Ohio  and  ex-Governor  of  that  state,  Secretary  of  the  Treasury, 
Simon  Cameron  of  Pennsylvania,  Secretary  of  War,  succeeded  within 
a  year  by  Edwin  M.  Stanton  of  Pennsylvania;   Edwin  Bates  of  Mis 
souri  Attorney  General,  and  Caleb  Smith  of  Indiana  Secretary  of  the 
Interior.     The  Navy  Department  went  to  Gideon  Welles  of  Connec 
ticut  and  the  Post  Office  Department  to  Montgomery  Blair  of  Mary 
land.     Bates  and  Blair  from  the  conservative  slave  states  served  to 
represent  that  uncertain  section  of  the  Union.     Though  able  and  rep 
resentative  of  the  various  sections  of  the  country,  the   new  cabinet 
proved  to  be  an  unruly  one;  but,  like  Washington,  Lincoln  proved 
himself  the  master  of  his  headstrong  advisers. 

The  selections  for  the  cabinet  were  made  before  inauguration  day. 
After  the  inauguration  came  the  difficult  task  of  selecting  the  subordi 
nate  officials  of  the  administration  such  as  the  foreign  xhereorgani- 
ministers  and  consuls,  the  officials  in  the  customs  service,  zation  of  the 
the  United  States  marshals,  the  postmasters,  and  the  ' 
hosts  of  officials  in  the  executive  departments  in  Washington.  Great 
care  was  necessary  to  detect  and  exclude  Southerners  and  Southern 
sympathizers,  and  to  install  in  office  only  the  unquestionably  loyal. 
Under  these  extraordinary  circumstances  Lincoln,  made  the  cleanest 
sweep  from  office  in  the  history  of  the  country,  not  even  excepting 
Jackson's  celebrated  "  division  of  the  spoils."  The  days  of  the  present 
civil  service  reform  were  yet  to  come. 

The  question  of  how  to  deal  with  the  seceding  states  was  soon  pressed 
home  on  the  new  President.  His  stand  against  compromise  was  unal 
terable  ;  and  in  the  inaugural  address  he  had  pledged  The  question 
himself  not  to  use  force  on  the  Southern  States  if  they  of  Fort 
remained  within  the  law.  Early  in  the  history  of  the  ' 
Federal  government  the  state  of  South  Carolina  had  ceded  to  the 
United  States  the  island  in  Charleston  harbor  on  which  Fort  Sumter 
was  situated,  and  the  officials  of  the  state  now  took  the  position  that 
under  secession  the  island  reverted  to  the  state.  South  Carolina 
even  endeavored  to  treat  with  the  authorities  at  Washington  as  to 
the  amount  of  money  to  be  paid  to  the  national  government  for  the 
improvements  on  the  island,  including  the  fort.  The  Washington 
government,  not  recognizing  that  there  could  be  such  a  thing  as 
secession,  would  neither  treat  with  the  state  nor  give  up  the  fort. 

Whether  or   not   to    attempt    to   send  provisions  to   the   United 


352      TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND  SECTIONAL  STRIFE 

States  garrison  at  Fort  Sumter  was  a  matter  for  immediate  de- 
Whetheror  cision.  Shots  had  been  fired  at  the  Star  of  the  West, 
not  to  send  when  the  attempt  had  been  made  in  the  preceding 

provisions.  j      .    .   ,  ,  ,  .  , . 

administration,  but  now  the  soldiers  were  on  the  verge 

of  starving.  In  the  crisis  many  friends  of  the  government  favored 
withdrawing  the  men  rather  than  bring  war  upon  the  nation.  "Let 


FORT  SUMTER 

the'  erring  sisters  go  in  peace,"  they  urged.  Even  some  members 
of  the  cabinet  favored  this  course,  but  Lincoln  refused  to  make  the 
humiliating  withdrawal,  nor  would  he  desert  his  own  soldiers.  With 
full  knowledge  of  the  probable  results  of  the  step,  he  sent  word  to  the 
Governor  of  South  Carolina  that  he  intended  to  send  provisions  into 
the  fort  but  not  men  or  military  supplies.  This  step  forced  upon 
the  South  the  responsibility  of  firing  the  first  shot,  if  they  chose  to 
resist. 

With  their  speedily  organized  government  behind  them,  the  Con 
federate  States  accepted  the  challenge.  On  Friday,  April  12,  1861,  at 
The  war  four-thirty  in  the  morning,  when  the  Federal  fleet  with 

begun.  provisions  was  off  the  harbor  of  Charleston,  the  South 

erners  under  orders  from  President  Davis  fired  on  Major  Anderson 
and  his  Union  garrison  at  Sumter  to  force  them  out  before  the  pro 
visions  could  be  landed.  The  fort  answered  gallantly,  but  after  more 
than  thirty  hours  of  continuous  fighting,  defense  was  hopeless  and 
the  garrison  was  compelled  to  surrender.  Major  Anderson  and  his 
men  were  allowed  to  give  a  last  salute  to  their  flag  and  to  march  out 
with  all  the  honors  of  war,  on  Sunday,  the  fourteenth  of  April,  and 
sail  away  to  New  York.  The  war  had  begun,  though  no  blood  was 
shed  in  the  first  encounter. 

The  Confederacy  had  been  engaged  in  raising  troops  for  several 


THE   CIVIL  WAR 


353 


SCALE  OF  MILES 


weeks  before  Sumter  was  fired  upon.     On  Monday  morning,  April  15, 
by  a  proclamation  which  resembled  that  of  Washington  when  the  lat 
ter  called  out  the  militia  to  suppress  the  Whisky  Insur-    The  rush  on 
rection,  Lincoln  issued  a  call  for  seventy-five  thousand    both  sides 
state  militia  to  carry  into  execution  the  laws  of  the  land. 
'The  dreadful  excitement  that  now  swept  over  both  sections  of  the 
nation  can  be  but  faintly 
realized  by  the  present 
generation.     To  avenge 
the  insult  to  the  national 
flag  on  the  one  hand,  and 
on  the   other   to   defend 
even  at  the   point    of 
the    sword   their  newly 
asserted  right  of  self-gov 
ernment,   Northern   and 
Southern  patriots  rushed 
forward  to  enlist,  in  the 
maddest  passion  that 
America  had  ever   seen. 
Friends  at  home  contrib 
uted  hundreds  of   thou 
sands  of  dollars  for  the 
comfort  of  the  volunteers  and  the  support  of  their  families,  and  in 
every  village  of   the   nation   the   young   soldiers   were    "off   to    the 
wars."     In  the  suspense  the  solemn  reflection  weighed  on  all,  that 
fellow-citizens  were  arrayed  against  fellow-citizens,  brothers  against 
brothers. 

Party  strife  ceased  in  the  North.  Douglas,  leader  of  the  Northern 
Democrats,  went  to  the  White  House  in  person  to  assure  his  old  rival 
of  his  own  support  and  that  of  his  followers.  The  state  Secession 
of  Virginia,  which  till  the  first  shots  had  been  fired,  had  completed- 
refused  to  secede,  was  drawn  into  the  Confederacy,  and  was  followed 
shortly  by  three  more  states,  Arkansas,  North  Carolina,  and  Tennes 
see.  Indeed  to  bring  these  conservative  states  into  their  fold  had 
been  one  of  the  chief  objects  of  the  South  in  taking  the  responsibility 
of  firing  on  the  flag  of  the  United  States,  even  though  it  was  feared 
that  the  accession  of  these  states  to  their  cause  must  be  secured  at 
the  expense  of  losing  friends  in  the  states  farther  north. 

On  the  anniversary  of  the  battle  of  Concord  and  Lexington,  April 
19,  one  week  after  the  bombardment  of  Fort  Sumter,  the  first  blood  of 
the  war  was  shed  in  the  streets  of  Baltimore,  Maryland.  The  sixth 


FORT  SUMTER  AND  CHARLESTON  HARBOR 


354      TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND   SECTIONAL  STRIFE 


The  first 

bloodshed, 

Baltimore, 

Maryland, 

April  19, 

1861. 


P     E 


INI  |N 


I      A 


Massachusetts  regiment,  crossing  the  city  on  its  way  to  Washington, 
was  confronted  by  a  crowd  of  Southern  sympathizers  and 
several  lives  were  lost.  Telegraph  wires  were  cut,  and 
railroad  bridges  and  tracks  were  destroyed  on  the  only 
route  between  Washington  and  the  North.  The  capital 
was  isolated  for  several  days.  At  last  several  regiments 
from  Massachusetts  and  New  York,  which  had  reached  Annapolis 
by  water,  marched  overland  to  Washington,  and  on  April  25,  rendered 
the  capital  safe. 

Lincoln's  first  call  for  troops  was  followed  quickly  by  a  call  for 
The  call  for  42,000  volunteers  for  three  years.  Neither  these  troops, 
troops.  however,  nor  the  militia  were  ordered  at  once  to  march 

against  the  South.     Delay  was  unavoidable.     The  first  attention  and 

energy  of  the  President  were 
necessarily  given  to  the  ques 
tion  of  civil  organization  and 
appointments  to  office.  The 
existence  of  a  strong  Southern 
sentiment  in  Baltimore  and 
throughout  the  state  of  Mary 
land  rendered  it  necessary  to 
secure  thorough  control  of  this 
region  north  of  Washington 
before  making  a  show  of  force 
against  the  states  farther 
south.  Lastly  the  green 
troops  that  had  been  gathered 
at  the  capital  were  sadly  in 
need  of  discipline  and  training 
before  they  would  be  fit  for 
active  service. 

The   weeks  rolled  by  with 
no  important  engagement,  and 
July  20  drew  near,  the  date  set 
for  the  meeting  of  the  Confederate  Congress  in  their  permanent  capi- 
tal   at   Richmond,   Virginia.     "On  to   Richmond!"   de- 
of  Bull  Run,      manded    the   impatient  Northern  press,  "the   Southern 
1861 21f  Congress  must  not  be  allowed  to  meet;"  and  "On  to 

Washington!"  rang  out  the  defiant  cry  from  the  South. 
On  Sunday,  July  21,  the  opposing  forces  of  the  two  sections  met  at 
Manassas  Junction  near  the  little  creek  of  Bull  Run  in  eastern  Virginia. 
General  McDowell,,  at  the  head  of  30,000  Union  men,  attacked  General 


SCALE  OF  MILES 


BATTLE  OF  BULL  RUN 


THE  CIVIL  WAR  355 

Beauregard  with  a  force  of  23,000  Southerners.  Both  armies  were 
green,  both  somewhat  afraid  to  fight;  but  after  an  all-day  struggle  the 
Confederates  won  and  the  Northerners  retreated  to  Washington,  thirty 
miles  away.  If  the  Southerners  had  pursued  them,  they  probably 
would  have  taken  the  Northern  capital  without  much  difficulty. 

While  the  first  battle  was  a  victory  for  the  South,  its  effects  at  the 
North  were  beneficial  rather  than  otherwise.     Men  were  aroused  to 
the  seriousness  of  the  task  that  had  been  undertaken    The  effect  of 
and  to  a  determination  to  fight  the  war  to  a  successful    the  battle- 
finish.     The  South,  on  the  other  hand,  was  unduly  elated  at  its  suc 
cess,  and  its  troops  returned  in  crowds  to  their  homes  in  the  belief 
that  the  war  was  over. 

Up  to  this  time  the  general  in  command  of  the  Northern  forces 
was  the  aged  veteran  of  two  wars, -Winfield  Scott.     He  now  retired, 
to  give  way  to  a  younger  man,  George  B.  McClellan,  who,    General  Mc- 
warned  by  the  lack  of  discipline  at  Bull  Run,  devoted  his    successor8  of 
energies   to  organizing  and  drilling  the  soldiers  in  the    General  Scott 
vicinity   of   Washington.     The    new   army,    which    was    SthTunion 
called  the  Army  of  the  Potomac,  was  held  back  by  its    forces. 
commander  from  active  offensive  operations  for  almost  a  year. 

The  task  of  the  South,  in  the  war  to  which  the  two  sections  were 
now  committed,  was  less  difficult  than  that  of  the  Federal  government. 
To  maintain  its  independent  status  and  repel  invasion  Military 
was  its  object,  with  incursions  into  the  Northern  ter-  proUwna, 
ritory  whenever  this  was  possible.  The  North,  on  the  other  hand,  was 
confronted  with  the  necessity  of  invading  and  subjugating  the  entire 
Southern  country.  Its  plan  of  aggressive  campaign  was  fivefold: 
first,  to  capture  Richmond;  second,  to  hold  the  Border  States  to  loyalty; 
third,  to  maintain  a  blockade  of  the  Southern  ports;  fourth,  to  push 
back  the  Southern  line  of  defense,  which  at  the  beginning  stretched 
from  Virginia  across  Kentucky  and  Tennessee  to  the  Mississippi 
and  beyond;  and,  fifth,  to  gain  possession  of  the  Mississippi  and 
thus  cut  the  Confederacy  into  two  parts.  The  North  must  at  the 
same  time  repel  invasion  of  her  own  territory  and  protect  the  capital 
at  Washington. 

In  May  and  June  of  1861,  the  first  year  of  the  war,  while  the  Wash 
ington  government  was  fastening  its  hold  on  Maryland  preparatory 
to  its  invasion  of  Virginia,  the  two  sides  were  struggling    Missouri's 
for  the  possession  of  the  Border  States  of  Missouri  and    stand  for 
Kentucky,  and   for  the  western  part  of  Virginia,  which    the  Umon- 
had   stood    out  against    secession.     The  governors  of   Missouri  and 
Kentucky  indignantly  refused  Lincoln's  call  for  militia;   in  Missouri 


356      TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND  SECTIONAL  STRIFE 

serious  fighting  was  required  to  save  the  state  to  the  Union,  and  it 
was  the  loyalty  of  the  large  number  of  freedom-loving  German 
immigrants  in  the  state  that  turned  the  scales.  The  Union  forces  in 
Missouri  were  under  the  immediate  command  of  General  Nathaniel 
Lyon  and  General  Francis  P.  Blair. 

Kentucky,  though  torn  by  dissension,  decided  for  the  Unkm  without 
serious  fighting,  while  the  western  part  of  Virginia  was  won  away 
Kentucky  and  from  the  Richmond  government  by  the  success  in  several 

West  Virginia  small  engagements  of  Captain,  later  General  McClellan, 
also  loyal  to  °  .° 

the  United  whose  achievements  here  paved  the  way  for  his  promo- 
States.  tjon  to  {.j^  pjace  Of  General  Scott.  The  West  Virginians 
remained  loyal,  and  in  1863  they  were  admitted  into  the  Union  as  a 
separate  state.  The  formation  of  this  state  was  a  war  measure,  for 
which,  strictly  speaking,  there  was  no  constitutional  warrant;  in  fact, 
the  Constitution  explicitly  says,  "No  new  state  shall  be  formed  or 
erected  within  the  jurisdiction  of  any  other  state;  nor  any  state  be 
formed  by  the  junction  of  two  or  more  states,  or  parts  of  states,  without 
the  consent  of  the  legislatures  of  the  states  concerned  as  well  as  of 
the  Congress." 

The  agricultural  South,  with  little  manufacturing,  was  obliged  to 
depend  on  outside  countries  for  most  of  its  manufactured  products,  and 

President  Lincoln  instituted  a  blockade  of  their  ports  to 
The  block 
ade  of  the         shut  off  the  possibility  of  further  importations  reaching 

Confederac  them  fr°m  the  ocean.  The  task  was  a  tremendous  one, 
nothing  less  than  the  patrol  of  thousands  of  miles  of  coast 
and  of  countless  entrances  to  harbors,  rivers,  and  inlets.  In  the  first 
days  it  was  necessarily  a  mere  paper  blockade  at  many  points,  but 
hundreds  of  ships  gradually  took  up  the  seemingly  impossible  task,  and 
as  the  number  of  blockade  runners  breaking  through  grew  less  and  less, 
it  was  evident  that  the  blow  dealt  the  Confederacy  by  the  blockade 
was  a  powerful  one. 

There  was  nevertheless  some  question  as  to  the  wisdom  of  the 
blockade.  To  institute  it  was  in  itself  an  act  of  war,  a  recognition  that 
Questions  those  against  whom  it  was  declared  had  the  right  to  per- 
raised  by  the  form  similar  acts  of  war  and  were  therefore  belligerents, 
regularly  clothed  with  the  right  to  wage  war.  According 
to  the  international  law  of  the  time  there  were  three  views  that  might 
be  taken  of  the  status  of  the  Southerners.  They  might  be  regarded 
as  rebellious  subjects  with  no  international  standing  whatsoever, 
whom  the  sovereign  government  of  the  United  States  was  bound  to 
reduce  to  allegiance.  For  rebellious  subjects  to  "wage  war"  was 
an  impossibility;  all  their  acts  of  violence  were  mere  lawless  acts 


THE  CIVIL  WAR  357 

against  their  lawful  government.  To  the  end  of  the  war  it  was  the 
contention  of  President  Lincoln  and  his  government  that  the  Con 
federates  were  in  this  class,  that  is,  mere  rebels.  President  Davis 
and  his  followers  placed  the  Confederacy  upon  higher  ground.  They 
aspired  to  the  highest  possible  station,  and  declared  themselves  to  be 
an  independent  nation.  No  other  nation  accorded  them  this  rank. 
There  was  a  third  grade  of  international  relationship,  midway  between 
rebellion  and  independence,  into  which  the  Southerners  might  be  placed, 
and  this  was  belligerency.  Parties  in  arms,  whose  belligerency  or 
right  to  wage  war  has  been  recognized,  have  achieved  the  first  step 
toward  independence.  Their  acts  of  violence  are  no  longer  mere  acts 
of  lawlessness,  but  acts  of  war;  they  have  the  right  to  equip  armies  and 
ships  of  war,  and  in  their  struggle  for  independence,  but  in  this  only, 
they  may  behave  themselves  like  an  independent  nation. 

Great  Britain  refused  to  regard  the  Confederates  as  the  rebellious 
subjects  of  the  United  States,  nor  would  she  go  so  far  as  to  recognize 
the  Southerners  as  independent.     She  chose  the  middle    Great  Brit- 
course  of  recognizing  them  as  belligerents,  alleging  that    ?inrand  the 
the  United  States  herself  had  substantially  taken  the  same    Of  the 
ground  by  the  declaration  of  the  blockade.    The  conditions    Confederacy, 
which,  by  international  law,  must  exist  in  a  rebellious  state  prior  to  a 
recognition  of  her  belligerency,  certainly  existed  in  the  Confederacy. 
These  are,  first,  that  the  insurgents  be  not  a  mere  band  of  marauders, 
but  seekers  after  a  political  end;  second,  that  they  carry  on  war  accord 
ing  to  the  rules  of  civilized  warfare;  third,  that  the  extent  of  the  revolt 
be  such  as  to  render  the  issue  at  least  doubtful;  and  fourth,  that  the 
rebels  be  under  a  responsible  governmental  organization. 

Despite  the  justification  of  the  British,  the  "unfriendly  haste"  of 
their  recognition  of  the  belligerency  of  the  Confederacy    E   . . 
was  greatly  resented  in  the  United  States,  and  .consti-    relations  be- 
tuted  the  first  in  a  series  of  events  which  embittered  the    unlteVstates 
relations  of  the  United  States  and  Great  Britain  through-    and  Great 
out  the  war. 

The  United  States  herself  in  other  ways  practically  recognized  the 
belligerent  rights  of  the  Confederacy,  for  example,  by  the  exchange 
of  prisoners.     Such  an  exchange  with  mere  rebels  would    The  attitude 
have   been   impossible.     Theoretically,   however,   in   the    of  the  United 
view  of  the  Northern  government  the  Southerners  to  the    theory  and 
end  remained  citizens  of  the  United  States  in  rebellion    in  practice, 
against  their  lawful  government. 


358     TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND  SECTIONAL  STRIDE 


A   YEAR   OF   UNCERTAINTY,    1862 

By  a  rapid  succession  of  events  beginning  early  in  1862  the  North 
ern  soldiers  and  sailors  pushed  the  Confederate  lines  in  the  western 
Pushing  arena  of  war  farther  and  farther  to  the  south.  In  Febru- 

back  the  arv  Commander  Foote  ascended  the  Tennessee  River  with 
lines  in  the  gunboats  and  captured  Fort  Henry,  and  ten  days  later 
West.  General  U.  S.  Grant  with  a  land  force  seized  Fort  Donelson 

on  the  Cumberland  and  took  15,000  prisoners.     At  this  fort  General 


n  Forces 
n +a,  -->---  Confederate  Farces 


SCALE  OF  MILES 


0  100  200 

OPERATIONS  IN  THE  WEST 


Grant  sent  his  famous  dispatch  to  the  Southerners,  "No  terms  except 
an  unconditional  and  immediate  surrender  can  be  accepted,"  which 
won  for  him  the  popular  title,  " Unconditional  Surrender"  Grant. 
Two  important  waterways  were  thus  opened  to  the  heart  of  the 
Confederacy,  and  the  Northerners  proceeded  to  take  advantage  of 
the  situation.  General  Grant  pushed  on  with  his  forces  up  the  Ten 
nessee  River  to  Shiloh  in  western  Tennessee,  and  on  April  6  and  7,  with 
desperate  fighting,  during  which  25,000  men  from  the  two  sides  were 
left  dead  or  wounded  on  the  battle  field,  drove  the  Confederates 
into  northern  Mississippi.  The  Southern  lines  rallied  at  Corinth,  but 
Grant  broke  through  and  compelled  them  to  retreat  farther  into  the 
South. 

An  attempt  to  carry  the  Confederate  flag  back  toward  the  North  was 


THE  CIVIL  WAR 


359 


of  New 
Orleans. 


made  late  in  the  same  year,  when  General  Bragg  with  30,000  soldiers 
struck  north  through  Chattanooga  by  railroad  to  a  point    Repuise  of 
near  Louisville,  Kentucky,  even  Cincinnati  being  reached    JJjtg^°fed~ 
by  a  small  band.     Bragg  was  obliged,  however,  to  face    vanceinto 
the  Federal  soldiers  at  Perryville,  Kentucky,  where  he    Kentucky- 
was  defeated,  and  again  at  Murfreesboro,  Tennessee,  where  he  was 
so  badly  shattered  by  the  Union  forces  that  he  abandoned  his  attempt 
and  remained  quietly  at  Chattanooga  for  several  months. 

Closely  following  the  seizures  of  Forts  Henry  and  Donelson,  the 
capture  of  Island  Number  10  in  the  Mississippi  River  b}'  the  Union 
forces  and  the  abandonment  by  the  Confederates  of  Fort    Seizing  the 
Pillow  and  the  city  of  Memphis  effectively  completed  the    Mississippi, 
opening  of  the  Mississippi  as  far  south  as  Vicksburg. 

From  the  south  the  river  was  opened  to  the  forces  of  the  Union  as 
far  north  as  Port  Hudson,  a  little  less  than  two  hundred  miles  south 
of  Vicksburg,  by  the  capture  of  the  South's  greatest  city    The  capture 
and    seaport,    New    Orleans.     The    commander    of    the 
victorious  expedition  against  this  city  was  Captain,  or 
after  this  victory,  Rear  Admiral,  Farragut,  who  as  a  boy  had  fought 
in  the  navy  against1  the  British  in  the 
War  of  1812;   and  with  him  was  the 
young  Lieutenant  George  Dewey,  who 
won  the  battle  of  Manila  Bay  in  the 
Spanish   War  in    1898.     Several   forts 
were  scattered  along   the  river  below 
New  Orleans,  while  heavy  iron  chains 
stretched  from  bank  to   bank   and   a 
fleet  of  gunboats  stood  on  guard.     All 
these   the   Northern   fleet  passed    and 
took  the  city.     The  closing  of  the  mouth 
of  the  river  was  of  material  assistance 
in  the   enforcement  of    the    blockade, 
and   left   the  control  of   that  interior 
waterway  in   Federal   hands  with  the 
exception   of   the   stretch   between   Port   Hudson   and   Vicksburg. 

The  spring  campaign  in  the  East  in  1862  opened  with  the  same 
success  ,for  the  Northern  arms.  On  the  sea  at  Hampton  Roads,  off 
the  coast  of  Virginia,  for  the  first  time  in  history  two  . 

ironclad  ships,  the  Northern   Monitor  and  the  Southern    and  the m 
Merrimac,  engaged  each  other.     On  the  day  previous,  the 
Merrimac,  which  was  a  wooden  ship  captured  from  the 
United  States  at  the  outbreak  of  hostilities,  now  newly  clad  in  iron 


SCALE   OF   MILES 


CAPTURE  OF  NEW  ORLEANS 


360     TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND  SECTIONAL  STRIFE 

and  renamed  the  Virginia,  had  destroyed  the  wooden  Union  ships, 
the  Congress  and  the  Cumberland,  and  had  disabled  the  Minnesota. 
Such  exploits,  if  continued,  would  have  accomplished  the  raising  of  the 
blockade.  The  North  was'afraid,  too,  that  the  new  vessel  might  sweep 


ERICSSON'S  MONITOR.     Side  Elevation 

on  victoriously  to  Washington,  Philadelphia,  New  York,  and  Boston, 
and  by  her  exploits  win  for  the  Confederacy  foreign  recognition  of  its 
independence  as  a  separate  nation.  The  Monitor  arrived  upon  the 
scene  at  the  critical  moment.  Its  inventor,  Ericsson,  had  conceived 
the  idea  of  an  ironclad  vessel  with  a  revolving  turret,  able  to  deliver 


THE  MONITOR  AND  THE  MERRIMAC 

fihots  in  any  direction  without  shifting  the  position  of  the  boat.  This 
strange  craft,  "the  Yankee  cheese-box  on  a  raft,"  steamed  up  to  her 
overtowering  antagonist  and  so  far  damaged  her  that  the  latter  re 
tired  and  refused  further  combat.  Ironclad  boats  were  not  entirely 
new,  for  they  had  been  used  in  the  Crimean  War  in  Europe,  1854-1856, 
but  with  the  duel  between  the  Monitor  and  the  Merrimac  the  era  of 
ironclads,  which  were  destined  to  revolutionize  naval  warfare  the 
world  over,  was  fairly  inaugurated. 


THE  CIVIL  WAR 


361 


In  the  peninsular  campaign  in  Virginia,  whirh  soon  followed,  the 
South  scored  a  victory.     The  Confederate  capital  was  protected  on 
the  north  by  rivers,  streams,  and  an  almost  impassable 
wilderness,  so  that  General  McClellan  determined  to  land    Of  McClellan 
his  troops  at  the  end  of  the  peninsula  between  the  York 
and  James  Rivers  and  march  on  Richmond  from  the  south. 
He  arrived  at  the  peninsula  at  the  head  of  a  well-drilled  army  of  100,000 
men,  but   was    unable    to 
reach  Richmond.     He  took 
Yorktown,  where  Cornwallis 
had  surrendered  in  the  War 
of  Independence,  then  Wil- 
liamsburg,  and   pushing 
north  by  hard  fighting  came 
within  sight   of   the  church 
spires    of    the    Confederate 
capital.     He   sent   word   to 
President    Lincoln   to    send 
him   every   available    man, 
and  received  the  promise  of 
McDowell's    army,    which 
was  defending  Washington. 
Just  then,  however,  Stone 
wall  Jackson  dashed  down 
the  Shenandoah  Valley,  at 
the  head  of  a  Confederate 
cavalry    force,    driving   out 
General  Banks  at  the  head 
of  a  Union  force  and  creat-' 
ing  alarm  for  the  safety  of 
the    Federal    capital.     Mc 
Dowell's    forces    were    sent 
into  the  Shenandoah  Valley 
against  Jackson,  while  Jack 
son   himself  quickly  joined 
Lee  at  Richmond  in  time  to 

aid  him  against  McClellan.  The  latter,  after  seven  days  of  almost 
continuous  fighting,  withdrew  to  Harrison's  Landing  on  the  James 
River,  whence  gunboats  conveyed  his  troops  back  to  Washington. 

The  North  was  chagrined  that  its  forces  had  failed  before  Richmond. 
Various  charges  were  made  against  McClellan,  that  he  was  too  cow 
ardly  to  fight,  that  his  heart  was  not  in  the  cause,  and  that  he  had 


McCLELLAN'S    PENINSULAR    CAMPAIGN 


discourage 
ment. 


362      TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND   SECTIONAL  STRIFE 

no  desire  to  submit  his  brother  Democrats  of  the  South  to  humiliating 
Dissatisfac-  conquest.  In  his  defense  it  was  asserted  that  it  was  the 
McCleUan  ramS  and  swamPs  that  had  turned  him  back.  Some 
palliated  his  lack  of  achievement,  declaring  that  politics 
in  Washington  had  much  to  do  with  his  inactivity,  and  that  he  was  not 
left  free  by  the  national  admin 
istration  to  take  such  action  as 
he  desired.  Certain  it  is  that 
he  was  baffled,  and  in  the  opin 
ion  of  many  only  by  the  gen 
ius  of  the  Confederate  leader, 
General  Robert  E.  Lee,  who  is 
ranked  with  General  Grant 
among  the  country's  greatest 
military  commanders. 

McClellan  was  relieved  of  the 
command  of  the  Army  of  the  Po- 
Northern  tomac  and  his  troops 

assigned  to  the  de 
fense  of  Washington, 
while  the  other  Union  soldiers  in 
eastern  Virginia  were  consoli 
dated  into  the  Army  of  Virginia, 
under  General  Pope,  the  victor 
at  Island  Number  10  in  the  West. 
Having  rendered  his  capital  safe 
for  the  moment,  Lee  ventured 
away  toward  Washington  and 
the  North.  His  able  general, 
Stonewall  Jackson,  defeated  a 
part  of  the  Union  forces  at  Cedar 
Mountain,  and  Lee  worsted  Pope 
at  the  Second  Battle  of  Bull  Run. 
The  latter  was  then  relieved  of  command  and  McClellan  was  restored 
to  the  head  of  the  Army  of  the  Potomac.  Lee  pressed  on  into  Mary 
land  in  his  first  invasion  of  the  North,  but  was  turned  back  though 
not  crushed  by  McClellan  at  Antietam,  in  one  of  the  bloodiest  bat 
tles  of  the  war.  McClellan  failed  for  some  reason  to  cut  off  Lee's  re 
treat  after  Antietam,  and  December  found  the  latter  back  again  before 
Richmond.  At  Fredericksburg  Lee  dealt  a  crushing  blow  to  the  Fed 
eral  forces  under  Burnside,  who  had  succeeded  McClellan  and  was 
attempting  to  march  on  Richmond  from  the  north. 


Confederat 


SCALE  OF  MILES 


FIRST  INVASION  OF  THE  NORTH 


THE  CIVIL  WAR  363 

THE    EMANCIPATION    PROCLAMATION 

President  Lincoln  at  the  outset  of  the  war  had  disclaimed  all  inten 
tion  of  interfering  with  slavery  in  the  states,  and  had  announced  that 
the  sole  purpose  of  the  war  was  to  save  the  Union.     Con-    The  original 
gress    displayed    the    same    spirit    in   resolutions   passed    purpose  of 
immediately  after  the  defeat  at  Bull  Run,  which  declared    1 
that  "this  war  is  not  waged   ...   in  any  spirit  of  oppression,  or  for 
any  purpose  of  conquest  or  subjugation,  or  purpose  of  overthrowing  or 
interfering  with  .the  rights  or  established  institutions  of  those  states, 
but  to  defend  and  maintain  the  supremacy  of  the  Constitution,  and  to 
preserve  the  Union  with  all  the  dignity,  equality,  and  rights  of  the 
several  states  unimpaired;  and  that  as  soon  as  these  objects  are  accom 
plished  the  war  ought  to  cease."     "The  Union  forever,"  was  one  of  the 
first  and  most  popular  songs  of  the  Northern  soldiers. 

Yet  an  even  more  popular  song  ran,   "John   Brown's  body  lies 
a-moldering  in  the  grave,  but  his  soul  goes  marching  on."     Should 
those  men  and  women  for  whom  John   Brown  died  be    The  growth 
delivered  up  again  to  slavery,  when  they  escaped  into  the    of  sentiment 
Northern  lines?     Thousands  of  blacks  in  the  first  year  of    emancipa- 
the  war  came  for  protection   to    General  Benjamin  F.    tion- 
Butler,  the  Union  commander  at  Fortress  Monroe  in  Virginia,  and  to 
their  masters  who  came  within  his  lines  to  claim  their  property  he 
refused  to  surrender  the  fugitives.     Butler  asserted  that  the  blacks 
were  contraband  of  war,  that  is,  property  which  by  the  law  of  war 
might  be  confiscated  as  being  useful  to  the  enemy.     The  theory  that 
slaves  were  property  was  thus  cleverly  turned  against  the  South. 

The  radicals  early  besieged  the  President  for  an  immediate  procla 
mation  of  emancipation,  urging  that  while  the  Constitution  gave  him 

no  power  directly  to  take  the  step,  he  could  yet  do  it  by 

.   /  r  .       .  J     ,.  f          J     Arguments 

virtue  of  his  military  powers  as  commander-in-cmei,  as  a    for  and 


military  measure  and  for  military  reasons.  Back  in  the 
thirties,  when  the  House  of  Representatives  was  debat 
ing  the  gag  rule,  John  Quincy  Adams  had  warned  the  South  that  the 
President  of  the  United  States  would  possess  this  power  over  their 
slaves  if  the  country  ever  fell  into  civil  war.  General  Fremont  in 
Missouri  in  1861  and  General  Hunter  in  South  Carolina  in  1862  rashly 
issued  proclamations  of  their  own,  without  the  previous  knowledge  of 
the  President,  to  free  the  slaves  within  their  military  districts;  but  their 
acts  were  promptly  disavowed  by  Lincoln,  who  believed  that  if  emanci 
pation  was  to  come,  it  should  be  uniform  in  its  operation  in  all  the 
opposing  Southern  States,  and  that  such  a  uniform  measure  could 


364      TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND  SECTIONAL  STRIFE 

come  only  from  himself.  Lincoln  wisely  hesitated  to  take  a  step  which 
would  surely  alienate  a  large  number  of  his  followers,  and  he  was 
especially  deterred  by  the  necessity  of  holding  true  to  the  Union  cause 
the  Border  States  of  Missouri,  Kentucky,  and  Maryland,  which  still 
held  their  slaves  and  might  be  driven  to  the  side  of  the  Confederacy  by 
too  radical  anti-slavery  measures. 

Meanwhile  Lincoln  pushed  two  plans  of  his  own  to  solve  the  ques 

tion  of  slavery  in  the  Border  States  and  to  establish  a  precedent  for 

the  solution  of  the  problem  in  the  more  southern  states 

sated  eman-      which  the  President  still  maintained  owed  obedience  to 

cipationand  ^im  as  the  chief  magistrate  of  the  nation.  His  first 
colonization. 

proposition  was  that  Congress  should  buy  the  slaves  of 
the  Border  States  for  $400  each,  which,  at  the  rate  of  the  cost  of  the  war 

at  that  time,  could  be  accom 
plished  at  an  expense  of  eighty- 
seven  days  fighting,  or  about 
$175,000,000.  The  slaveholders 
showed  no  disposition  to  accept 
the  plan,  and  Congress  made  no 
appropriation  to  carry  it  out. 
The  President's  second  plan,  to 
remove  the  cause  of  the  war  root 
and  branch  by  colonizing  the 
negroes  in  some  place  out  of  the 
country,  also  failed  to  receive 
the  approval  of  Congress.  The 
negroes  themselves  were  averse 
to  this  scheme,  just  as  they  had 
disliked  the  attempt  of  the  Ameri 
can  Colonization  Society  to  re 
move  them  out  of  the  United 
States  to  Liberia;  and  the  radi- 


WENDELL  PHILLIPS  cal  anti-slavery  element  opposed 

the  movement  as  less  than  jus 
tice  to  the  blacks  after  their  long  enforced  servitude. 

Congress  meanwhile  followed  along  slowly  after  the  soul  of  John 
Brown,  first  by  prohibiting  slavery  in  the  District  of  Columbia  and 
paying  the  masters  about  $300  for  each  slave,  then  by 
slavery  prohibiting  slavery  in  the  territories  of  the  United  States 

of      in  spite  of  the  opinion  of  the  Supreme  Court  in  the  Dred 
Scott  case,  by  sanctioning  a  treaty  with  Great  Britain  for 
the  more  effective  prevention  of  the  foreign  slave  trade,  and  by  passing 


THE  CIVIL  WAR 


365 


laws  for  the  confiscation  of  the  property  of  Southerners  in  arms 
against  the  government.  There  were  those  who  argued  that  in  the 
confiscation  laws  the  destruction  of  slavery  was  included.  The  laws 
were  left  vague  on  the  point;  yet 
it  was  plain  that  they  meant  to 
declare  free  all  the  slaves  escap 
ing  into  the  Union  lines  and  all 
who  were  required  by  their  mas 
ters  to  aid  the  rebellion.  Bitter 
indeed  were  the  quarrels  between 
the  radical  anti-slavery  leaders 
on  the  one  hand,  led  by  William 
Lloyd  Garrison  of  the  Liberator, 
Horace  Greeley  of  the  New  York 
Tribune,  Henry  Ward  Beecher 
of  the  New  York  Independent, 
Wendell  Phillips,  the  orator  of 
anti-slavery,  and  United  States 
Seriator  Charles  Sumner  of  Mas 
sachusetts,  and  the  conservatives 
on  the  other,  led  by  George  H. 
Pendleton  and  Clement  L.  Val- 
landigham  of  Ohio,  and  Horatio 
Seymour,  elected  governor  of 

New  York  in  1862.  HORACE  GREELEY 

After   McClellan's  failure   to 

take  Richmond  in  the  summer  of  1862,  the  presidential  policies  of  com 
pensated  emancipation  and  colonization  having  come  to    The  Emanci- 
naught,  Lincoln  decided  that  it  was  necessary  to  strike    pation  Proc- 
^      o      ^         ^  11-        11  i  ^i     ^  f  -T-L  -r     lamation  of 

the  South  a  telling  blow,  and  that  for  military  reasons,  if    President 

for  no  other,  strong  measures  in  regard  to  slavery  were  Lincoln- 
necessary.  He  announced  to  his  cabinet  that  he  had  determined  on 
the  extreme  step  of  emancipation,  but  that  he  would  defer  the  issue 
of  a  Proclamation  of  Emancipation  till  there  was  a  decided  victory  in 
the  field  to  give  it  force.  On  the  day  following  the  battle  of  Antietam 
the  President  proclaimed  his  intention  of  freeing  the  slaves  of  the  re 
bellious  states  in  one  hundred  days,  if  the  Southerners  still  held  out 
against  him  at  that  time.  His  final  Proclamation  of  Emancipation, 
January  i,  1863,  issued  "by  virtue  of  the  power  in  me  vested  as  com- 
mander-in-chief  of  the  army  and  navy  of  the  United  States,  and  as  a 
fit  and  necessary  war  measure  for  suppressing  said  rebellion,"  an 
nounced:  "I  do  order  and  declare  that  all  persons  held  as  slaves 


THE  CIVIL  WAR 


367 


within  said  designated  states  are,  and  henceforward  shall  be,  free;  and 
that  the  executive  government  of  the  United  States,  including  the 
military  and  naval  authorities  thereof,  will  recognize  and  maintain  the 
freedom  of  said  persons." 

The  practical  meaning  of  the  proclamation  was  that  it  was  the 
President's  intention  to  free  the  Southern  slaves  if  his  armies,  by 

winning  vie-    , 

,,     Practical 
tones,  would     meaning  of 

give  him  the     the  procla 
mation, 
opportunity. 

Inasmuch  as  the  whole 
South,  elated  at  Lee's 
successes,  was  scoffing  at 
the  idea  of  the  triumph 
of  the  North,  the  procla 
mation  was  to  them  at 
first  an  object  of  ridicule. 
On  the  first  day  of 
the  year,  1863,  Lincoln 
began  to  accept  into  his 
armies  all  negroes,  North- 
ern  and  Thenegroes 

Southern     enrolled  as 

alike,  who  soldiers' 
would  enlist.  Previously 
the  blacks  of  the  South 
had  performed  the  work 
of  the  plantations  in  the 
absence  of  their  masters 
in  the  army.  If  these 
blacks  could  be  induced  to  run  away,  the  Confederacy  would  be  weak 
ened  by  the  loss  of  laborers;  and  if  at  the  same  time  they  could  be 
brought  to  fight  for  the  United  States,  the  Union  would  be  doubly 
benefited. 

THE  TURNING  OF  THE  TIDE,  1863 

In  May,  1863,  when  the  armies  resumed  fighting  after  leaving  winter 
quarters,  Lee  a  third  time  turned  back  the  invading  Northern  army  from 
his  capital  at  Richmond,  by  an  overwhelming  victory  over    The  battle 
General  Hooker  at  Chancellorsville,  sixty  miles  north  of    of  Chancel- 
Richmond,  in  eastern  Virginia.     Hooker  was  proving  no 
more  successful  in  command  of  the  Union  forces  in  Virginia  than  had 
McClellan  and  Burnside,  and  he  was  superseded  by  Meade. 


SCALE  OF  MILES 


SECOND  INVASION  OF  THE  NORTH 


368      TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND   SECTIONAL  STRIFE 


Emboldened  by  his  victories,  Lee  left  Richmond  on  his  second  at 
tempt  to  invade  the  North,  but  he  was  decisively  checked  in  a  bloody 
The  battle  of  battle  at  Gettysburg  in  southern  Pennsylvania,  July  1,2, 
Gettysburg.  an(j  ^_  ^his  ^as  ^e  only  great  engagement  on  free  soil 
and  is  generally  accounted  the  most  important  battle  of  the  war.  Each 

army  planted  itself  on  a  com 
manding  height,  and  between 
these  hills  for  two  days  the  tide 
of  battle  surged  back  and  forth. 
On  the  third  day  Lee  took  a  tre 
mendous  chance  and  sent  General 
Pickett  with  fifteen  thousand  men 
to  charge  on  the  Northerners  un 
der  General  Hancock  on  Ceme 
tery  Ridge.  The  men  had  to  cross 
an  open  stretch  a  mile  in  width, 
where  the  Northern  guns  mowed 
them  down ;  only  a  few  succeeded 
in  reaching  the  opposing  lines. 
The  Northerners  had  won,  and 
the  battle  was  over.  The 
Unionists  numbered  about  ninety 
thousand  men  in  this  battle,  the 
Confederates  seventy-five  thou 
sand;  the  total  loss  of  the  two 
sides  was  fifty-one  thousand. 

A  memorable  Fourth   of  July 
succeeded  the  victory,  for  on  the 

same  day  came  the  news  from  Vicksburg  that  this  Gibraltar  of  the  Mis- 
The  capture  sissippi  had  surrendered  to  General  Grant,  and  that  prac- 
of  Vicksburg.  tically  the  entire  river  was  in  the  hands  of  the  Federals. 
Port  Hudson,  the  last  stronghold  on  the  river  to  fall,  surrendered 
within  a  few  days.  The  Confederacy  was  cut  in  two,  the  Southern 
invasion  of  the  North  turned  back,  and  the  tide  of  success  shifted  to 
the  Union. 

The  year  closed  with  successful  campaigning  by  the  Union  armies 
in  Tennessee,  where  the  Southern  line  was  still  being  pushed  back. 
General  Bragg  was  compelled  by  General  Rosecrans  to  abandon 
Union  Chattanooga,  whither  he  had  retreated  from  Murfrees- 

victories  in  boro,  and  this  important  railroad  center  came  into 
Tennessee.  Federal  hands.  Bragg  then  made  a  furious  but  unsuc 
cessful  onslaught  upon  Rosecrans  at  Chickamauga,  near  Chattanooga, 


SCALE  OF  MILES 


50 


100 


150 


THE  VICKSBURG  CAMPAIGN 


THE  CIVIL  WAR 


369 


but  through  the  firm  stand  of  General  Thomas,  who  held  the  Union 
center,  the  attack  failed. 

Important  as  Chattanooga  might  be,  it  was  not  pleasant  for 
Rosecrans's  successor, 
Thomas,  and  his  army  to 
be  shut  up  in  the  city,  as 
they  were  after  this  bat 
tle,  by  surrounding  Con 
federate  forces.  Grant, 
who  was  in  command  of 
the  Union  armies  in  the 
West,  proceeded  to  re 
lieve  the  situation  by 
seizing  the  strategic  point 
of  Lookout  Mountain  and 
Missionary  Ridge,  after 
which  Bragg  and  his  army  abandoned  the 
siege  of  Chattanooga  and  withdrew  to  the 
south. 

In  the  same  way  Burnside,  who  had  seized 
Knoxville,  was  besieged  within  it,  until  Sher 
man  went  to  his  relief  and  drove  Longstreet 
and  his  besieging  army  into  Virginia. 

During  the  year  1863  violent  opposition  broke  out  in  the  North 
against  the  practice  of  drafting  or  forcing  men  into  the  army,  which 
the  government  was  at  last  finding  necessary,  in  addition    The  draft 
to  the  call  for  volunteers  and  the  offer  of  bounties,  in    riots  in  the 
order  to  secure  a  sufficient  number  of  recruits.     For  several 
days  after  Gettysburg  New  York  City  was  in  the  hands  of  a  mob, 
which  showed  its  hatred  of  the  draft  by  destroying  millions  of  dollars' 
worth  of  property  and  killing  scores  of  negroes  whom  they  regarded 
as  the  cause  of  the  country's  woes.     To  put  down  the  riot  United 
States  soldiers  were  obliged  to  adopt  extreme  measures,  and  killed  or 
wounded  more  than  a  thousand  people  in  the  city  streets.     There  were 
lesser  outbreaks  at  about  the  same  time  in  other  cities,  but  no  other 
riot  in  the  history  of  the  country  has  assumed  such  serious  proportions. 

Besides  the  disturbances  over  the  draft,  there  was  general  dissatis 
faction  over  the  President's  arbitrary  methods  of  government.     The 
Democrats  with  unsparing  vigor  assailed  Lincoln's  prac-    Arbitrary 
tice  of  suppressing  newspapers  which  sympathized  with    government, 
the  South,  and  his  custom  of  suspending  the  writ  of  habeas  corpus  and 
arbitrarily  arresting  thousands  of  people  and  keeping  them  in  prison 


MURFREESBORO  TO 
ATLANTA 


370     TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND  SECTIONAL  STRIFE 


without  informing  them  of  the  charges  against  them  or  giving  them  a 
hearing.  The  Democrats,  sometimes  called  Copperheads  for  their 
opposition  to  the  government  and  their  alleged  sympathy  with  the 
South,  declared  these  measures  to  be  contrary  to  the  Constitution. 
Lincoln  and  the  Republicans  admitted  the  charge,  but  they  claimed 

that  in  the  crisis  they 
were  justified  in  break- 
in  g  the  Constitution 
temporarily  in  order  to 
save  the  Union,  and  that 
the  Democrats  ought 
not  to  be  so  impractical 
as  to  stand  out  for  con 
stitutional  practices 
when  the  life  of  the  na 
tion  was  at  stake.  Said 
Lincoln:  "I  did  under 
stand,  however,  that  my 
oath  to  preserve  the 
Constitution  to  the  best 
of  my  ability,  imposed 
on  me  the  duty  of  pre 
serving  by  every  indis 
pensable  means,  that 
government,  that  na 
tion,  of  which  the  Con 
stitution  was  the  organic 
law.  Was  it  possible  to 
lose  the  nation  and  yet 
preserve  the  Constitu 
tion?  By  general  law 
life  and  limb  must  be 
protected,  yet  often  a 
limb  must  be  ampu 
tated  to  save  a  life;  but  a  life  is  never  wisely  given  to  save  a  limb. 
I  felt  that  measures  otherwise  unconstitutional  might  become  lawful 
by  becoming  indispensable  to  the  preservation  of  the  Constitution 
through  the  preservation  of  the  nation.  Right  or  wrong  I  assumed 
this  ground,  and  now  avow  it.  I  could  not  feel  that  to  the  best  of  my 
ability,  I  had  even  tried  to  preserve  the  Constitution,  if,  to  save  slavery 
or  any  minor  matter,  I  should  permit  the  wreck  of  government,  coun 
try,  and  Constitution  altogether." 


NOT  ACCORDING  TO  THE  CONSTITUTION 

Cartoon  from  Vanity  Fair. 

Mr.  Copperhead.  —  I  know  my  house  is  on  fire,  just  as 
well  as  you  do.  If  you  want  to  save  it  play  on  it  from 
the  outside  as  much  as  you  choose,  but  I  deny  your  right 
to  enter  without  my  permission;  my  house  is  my  castle, 
and  any  attempt  to  enter  it  by  force  is  clearly  un-con-sti- 
tu-tion-al. 


THE  CIVIL  WAR 


371 


The  blockade  of  the  Southern  ports  by  the  Union  navy  perceptibly 
tightened  its  hold  during  the  year  1863,  while  in  turn  the  small  South 
ern  navy,  ranging  free  on  the  ocean  outside  the  blockade,  The  war  on 
grew  more  active  in  its  attacks  on  Northern  commerce.  the  ocean- 
The  most  famous  of  these  vessels  was  the  Alabama,  which  was  in  the 
habit  of  sailing  falsely 
under  British  colors  till 
she  came  close  to  a 
Union  vessel,  when  she 
would  suddenly  hoist  her 
true  colors  and  call  for 
surrender.  Deprived  by 
the  blockade  of  the  op 
portunity  of  taking  her 
numerous  prizes  into  a 
home  port,  and  forbid 
den  by  the  neutrality 
rules  of  international  law 
to  take  them  into  foreign 
ports,  she  was  accus 
tomed  to  strip  the  cap 
tive  vessels  of  everything 
of  value  and  then  fire 
them  or  set  them  adrift. 
Her  prisoners  she  freed 
in  neutral  ports.  Dur 
ing  the  last  part  of  1862, 

throughout  1863,  and  for  AN  ARGUMENT  FOR  THE  USE  OF  NEGRO  SOLDIERS 

Six  months  in    1864,   the  Cartoon  from  Vanity  Fair. 

Alabama  sailed  the  seas,       .    Gentleman    of  Color  -  "Yah!  Yah!     Darkey  nab  de 

best  ob  it  now.     Dar  s  de  White  Man  s  draff,  and  here  s 

the  terror  ot  Northern     deNiggah's!" 
commerce.     In    June, 

1864,  she  was  sunk  by  the  Union  man-of-war,  the  Kearsarge,  after  an 
encounter  off  the  coast  of  France,  and  the  hazards  of  Northern  com 
merce  were  appreciably  lessened. 

The  damage  wrought  by  the  Alabama  and  her  kindred  ships  was 
perhaps  the  most  disastrous  blow  struck  by  the  war  upon  any  Northern 
interest.     The  commerce  of  the  Atlantic,  largely  in  the    „.     .. 
hands  of  the  United  States  in  the  first  part  of  the  nine-    pearance  of 
teenth  century,  had  to  a  large  extent  been  transferred  to 
foreign  ships  when  the  wars  of  Great  Britain  and  France    United 
were  at  an  end  and  capital  in  the  United  States  turned  to    States* 


372      TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND  SECTIONAL  STRIFE 

manufacturing.  By  the  year  1861  the  ships  of  foreign  nations  carried 
almost  one-half  of  the  commerce  of  the  United  States,  and  by  1865 
the  proportion  had  risen  to  three-fourths.  The  rapidity  of  the  change 
in  the  short  period  of  four  years,  1861-1865,  was  largely  due  to  the 
depredations  of  the  Confederate  ships.  Twenty-five  of  these  cruisers 
succeeded  in  capturing  two  hundred  and  eighty-four  vessels  of  North 
ern  commerce,  worth,  including  their  cargoes,  $25,000,000.  The  cap 
tures  of  the  Alabama  alone  numbered  eighty-four.  Many  Northern 
vessels,  afraid  to  venture  on  the  sea  as  merchantmen,  went  into  govern 
ment  transport  service,  more  than  one  thousand  of  them  gave  up  the 
protection  of  the  flag  of  the  United  States  and  registered  themselves  as 
British  vessels  under  the  British,  flag,  while  only  a  few  retained  their 
registry  as  United  States  vessels.  The  merchant  marine  of  the 
United  States,  that  is,  vessels  of  commerce  sailing  under  the  stars 
and  stripes,  has  never  recovered  from  the  blow,  and  it  is  this  situa 
tion  which  from  the  days  of  the  war  down  to  the  present  time  has 
furnished  the  basis  of  the  demand  for  a  ship  subsidy,  or  a  grant  of 
money  from  the  national  treasury,  to  encourage  commercial  vessels 
to  come  again  under  the  flag  of  the  United  States  and  win  back  the 
nation's  lost  supremacy  in  the  carrying  trade  on  the  ocean. 

FOREIGN  RELATIONS 

At  the  beginning  of  the  war  the  government  and  the  ruling  classes 

in  Great  Britain  sympathized  with  the  South.    This  attitude  was  due 

in  part  to  trade  rivalry  and  in  part  to  traditional  hostility 

GreatBritain  to  the  United  States  that  had  resulted  from  the  American 

uSted States  Revolution  and  the  War  of   lSl2-     The  great  mass  of  the 
common  people,  however,  espoused  the  cause  of  free  labor 

against  slavery  and  favored  the  North.  This  was  the  attitude  of  the 
workingmen,  although  many  of  them  were  out  of  work  and  hungry  be 
cause  the  blockade  of  Southern  ports  by  the  United  States  had  cut  off 
the  supply  of  cotton  for  English  mills.  Such  leaders  as  John  Bright, 
Richard  Cobden,  and  John  Stuart  Mill  also  came  out  for  the  North 
ern  course. 

The  commercial  interests,  in  general,  favored  the  South  for  business 
reasons.  On  all  possible  occasions  they  broke  through  the  blockade 
Breaking  the  with  their  ships,  brought  in  supplies,  took  out  cotton,  and 
blockade.  undoubtedly  in  this  way  prolonged  the  war  many  months. 
To  a  large  extent  the  commercial  houses  of  Liverpool,  Manchester, 
Sheffield,  and  other  British  manufacturing  centers  helped  to  support  the 
Southern  people,  while  the  latter  made  war  on  the  United  States.  Said 


THE  CIVIL  WAR  373 

Earl  Russell,  Her  Majesty's  Secretary  of  State  for  Foreign  Affairs,  in  the 
House  of  Commons  in  London,  "It  has  been  a  most  profitable  business  to 
send  swift  vessels  to  break  or  run  the  blockade  of  the  Southern.ports,  and 
carry  their  cargoes  into  those  ports.  ...  I  understand  that  every 
cargo  that  runs  the  blockade  and  enters  Charleston  is  worth  a  million 
dollars,  and  that  the  profit  on  these  transactions  is  immense.  It  is 
well  known  that  the  trade  has  attracted  a  great  deal  of  attention  in  this 
country  from  those  who  have  a  keen  eye  to  such  gains,  and  that  vessels 
have  been  sent  to  Nassau  in  order  to  break  the  blockade  at  Charleston, 
Wilmington,  and  other  places,  and  carry  contraband  of  war  into  some 
of  the  ports  of  the  Southern  States."  Earl  Russell  added  that  it  was 
no  violation  of  international  law  for  his  fellow-citizens  to  run  the  block 
ade  and  to  sell  contraband  of  war  to  the  belligerents,  as  the  neutral 
Americans  themselves  had  maintained  during  the  British  wars  against 
Napoleon  when  the  practice  had  brought  them  millions  of  dollars. 

Rancor  against  Great  Britain  was  at  its  height  in  the  United  States, 
when  in  November,  1861,  the  Trent  affair  occurred.  Captain  Wilkes 
of  the  United  States  war  vessel  San  Jacinto  stopped  the  The  Trent 
British  mail  steamer  Trent  and  removed  from  her  by  affain 
force  Messrs.  Mason  and  Slidell,  Confederate  commissioners  to  Great 
Britain  and  France  respectively,  whose  especial  mission  it  was  to  obtain, 
if  possible,  recognition  from  these  countries  of  the  independence  of  the 
Confederacy.  The  captives  were  imprisoned  in  Fort  Warren  in  Boston 
harbor.  The  seizure  was  dangerously  near  the  old  British  practice 
of  the  right  of  search,  exercised  now  against  Great  Britain  herself,  and 
the  British  prepared  for  war.  The  question  was  thrust  home  on 
President  Lincoln  whether  he  would  have  two  wars  on  his  hands  at 
once,  and  wisely,  like  President  Polk  in  the  similar  crisis  of  the  forties, 
he  decided  that  one  war  at  a  time  was  enough  and  surrendered  the 
prisoners  on  demand.  Certain  leaders  of  public  opinion  insisted  on 
retaining  Mason  and  Slidell,  but  they  were  overborne  by  the  President's 
good  sense.  In  the  correspondence  with  the  British  Foreign  Secretary, 
Secretary  Seward  adroitly  congratulated  the  British  on  having  come 
to  the  American  point  of  view  in  regard  to  the  right  of  search.  Mason 
and  Slidell  went  on  their  way,  but  their  errand  was  fruitless. 

Not  only  political  expediency,  but  also  the  plain  requirements  of 
international  law  dictated  the  surrender  of  the  captured  commissioners. 
Mason   and   Slidell,    as   official   representatives   of   their    The  inter_ 
country,  were  indeed  subject  to  capture,  first  as  contra-    national  law 
band  of  war,  and  second,  because  they  had  disregarded    {  fthecase- 
the  blockade  in  making  their  escape  from  the  Confederacy  to  join  the 
Trent  in  Cuba;  but  these  two  considerations  Captain  Wilkes  thought- 


374     TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND  SECTIONAL  STRIFE 

lessly  renounced  by  an  illegal  method  of  capture.  Instead  of  taking 
the  captives  off  the  Trent  and  allowing  the  ship  with  the  rest  of  her 
cargo  to  proceed  on  her  way,  to  be  within  legal  limits  he  should  have 
brought  both  the  ship  and  the  cargo  into  a  prize  court  of  the  United 
States  and  there  have  secured  a  condemnation  of  Mason  and  Slidell  by 
regular  judicial  action. 

The  sudden  increase  of  ill  feeling  in  the  North  against  Great  Britain, 
which  now  arose  from  the  belief  that  Her  Majesty  had  taken  an  unfair 
The  concilia-  advantage  of  the  United  States  when  its  hands  were  tied 
tory  attitude  by  civil  war,  President  Lincoln  did  not  attempt  to  foster, 
Lincoln  to?*  ^ut  ^or  t^le  Permanent  advantage  of  his  country  did 
wards  Great  everything  in  his  power  to  dissipate.  He  consciously 
proceeded  in  the  early  months  of  1862  to  conciliate  the 
an ti- slavery  element  of  Great  Britain  by  making  with  that  country 
a  strict  treaty  for  the  suppression  of  the  foreign  slave  trade  on  the 
coast  of  Africa,  and  as  a  sign  of  the  new  determination  of  the  national 
government  at  last  to  lay  the  strong  hands  of  the  law  on  the  abhorrent 
traffic,  one  Nathaniel  Gordon  was  convicted  and  executed  for  engaging 
in  the  trade.  The  President  refused  executive  clemency  to  the  culprit, 
though  the  extreme  penalty  had  never  before  been  exacted  for  the 
offense.  Next  came  Lincoln's  efforts  to  colonize  the  blacks  outside  the 
country  and  his  offer  to  buy  the  slaves  of  the  Border  States,  followed 
soon  by  the  Emancipation  Proclamation,  which  conclusive  proof  that 
the  United  States  had  at  last  put  the  war  on  an  anti-slavery  basis 
rendered  it  impossible  for  the  freedom-loving  British  to  offer  open  aid 
to  the  Confederacy.  Their  national  conscience  would  not  tolerate 
interference  in  the  affairs  of  another  country  in  the  interests  of  human 
slavery. 

There  was  a  serious  point  of  difference  also  between  the  two  coun 
tries  over  the  fitting  out  of  Confederate  vessels  in  the  ports  of  Great 
Thefittin  Britain.  Number  "290"  was  constructed  in  the  ship- 
out  of  the  yards  of  Liverpool,  was  allowed  to  get  away  and  on  the 
war^ves^eis6  sea  to  recerve  ner  equipment  and  armament  of  war,  and 
in  Great  then  to  sail  the  seas  as  the  Alabama;  the  Florida  was 

also  built  in  Liverpool,  and  after  issuing  from  that  port 
was  allowed  to  take  on  men,  supplies,  and  armament;  the  Shenandoah 
sailed  from  London,  and  in  Melbourne,  Australia,  secretly  enlisted 
men.  These  and  the  other  commerce  destroyers  of  the  Confederacy, 
practically  the  entire  navy  of  the  Southerners,  were  obtained  by  the 
South  in  the  supposedly  neutral  British  ports,  in  spite  of  the  fact 
that  the  British  Foreign  Enlistment  Act  of  1819,  drawn  on  the 
model  of  Washington's  Neutrality  Proclamation  of  1793  and  the 


THE  CIVIL  WAR  375 

United  States  Neutrality  Act  of  1794,  definitely  forbade  the  furnishing 
of  ships  to  belligerents  for  use  against  a  nation  with  which  Great 
Britain  was  at  peace.  The  United  States  Minister  in  London,  Charles 
Francis  Adams,  son  of  John  Quincy  Adams  and  grandson  of  John 
Adams,  pointed  out  the  obvious  destination  of  the  vessels  and  solemnly 
called  upon  the  British  to  enforce  their  own  law.  As  ship  after  ship 
got  away  from  English  ports  for  the  Confederacy,  it  seemed  as  if  the 
neutrality  of  Great  Britain  was  being  violated,  and  when  in  1863  two 
ironclad  rams  were  ready  to  leave  Minister  Adams  wrote  to  Lord  Rus 
sell,  "It  wou]d  be  superfluous  for  me  to  point  out  to  your  Lordship 
that  this  is  war."  The  implied  threat  was  successful,  the  rams  did  riot 
sail,  and  no  more  British  vessels  reached  the  Confederacy.  After  the 
war  the  claims  of  the  United  States  for  damages  against  Great  Britain 
were  settled  by  arbitration. 

Another  serious  problem  in  connection  with  foreign  affairs  con 
cerned  Mexico.  After  the  war  with  Mexico  in  the  forties  that  country 
had  experienced  almost  constant  civil  strife,  in  the  course  The  French 
of  which  citizens  of  the  United  States  and  of  several  in  Mexico- 
European  states  had  been  violently  and  unjustly  treated.  The  demand 
foi  intervention  and  redress  of  grievances  at  last  became  general,  and 
France,  Great  Britain,  and  Spain  joined  their  forces  and  invaded  Mexico 
with  a  military  expedition  late  in  1861  to  exact  satisfaction.  Great 
Britain  and  Spain  withdrew  their  forces  after  a  short  time,  but  France 
continued  the  castigation.  She  conquered  the  Mexicans  and  in  spite 
of  the  warnings  of  the  United  States  set  up  over  them  in  1864  what 
was  practically  a  French  monarchy,  with  Archduke  Maximilian, 
brother  of  the  Emperor  of  Austria,  as  Emperor.  The  Congress  of 
the  United  States  passed  a  resolution  of  protest.  "Resolved,  that  the 
Congress  of  the  United  States  are  unwilling  by  silence  to  leave  the 
nations  of  the  world  under  the  impression  that  they  are  indifferent 
spectators  of  the  deplorable  events  now  transpiring  in  the  republic  of 
Mexico;  therefore  they  think  it  fit  to  declare  that  it  does  not  accord 
with  the  sentiment  of  the  people  of  the  United  States  to  acknowledge 
that  a  monarchical  government  may  be  erected  on  the  ruins  of  any 
republican  government  in  America,  under  the  auspices  of  any  European 
power."  The  national  convention  of  the  Republican  party  passed  an 
even  stronger  resolution  on  the  subject. 

The  French  well  knew  that  the  United  States  was  in  no  position 
to  enforce  the  Monroe  Doctrine  against  them,  and  the    xhe  tempo- 
new  monarchy  temporarily  went  on  its  course,  while  the    rary  success 
United  States  reserved  the  visitation  of  its  wrath  till  a    oftheFrench- 
later  day. 
85 


376      TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND   SECTIONAL  STRIFE 


THE   WAR  AND   THE   PRESIDENTIAL  ELECTION   OF    1864 

The  Confederacy's  only  political  contest  had  taken  place  late  in 
1 86 1,  when  Jefferson  Davis  was  unanimously  elected  Presi- 
nection  be-        dent  under  the  Permanent  Constitution  for  a  term  of  six 
years>  but  the  North  was  confronted  with  the  necessity  of 
a  presidential  contest  in  the  critical  year  of  1864,  when  the 
outcome  of  the  political  struggle  depended  almost  entirely  on  the  for 
tunes  of  war. 

Fighting  in  1864  began  in  May.     General  Grant,  fresh  from  his 
victories  in  the  West  and  South,  was  placed  by  President  Lincoln  in 
command  of  all  the  Union  forces  in  the  field.     Grant  left 
before18  Sherman  in  command  of  the. armies  around  Chattanooga, 

and  himself  came    to   Virginia   to   try  his  skill   against 
Richmond.     His  policy  was  to  take  the  Southern  capital 
from  the  north,  and  to  the   President   he  announced:  "I   will   fight 

it  out  on  this  line  if  it 
takes  all  summer." 
He  fought  the  ex 
hausting  but  indeci 
sive  battles  of  the 
Wilderness,  Spottsyl- 
vania,  and  Cold  Har 
bor,  and  after  six 
weeks  of  almost  con 
tinuous  struggle  he 
gave  up  the  attempt 
to  approach  Rich 
mond  from  the  north, 
transferred  his  army 
to  the  south  of  the 
James,  and  settled 
down  to  the  siege  of 
Petersburg.  Like  Mc- 
Clellanin  1862,  Grant 
had  at  last  decided  to 
approach  Richmond 
from  the  south. 

In  the  trying 
month  of  May,  1864, 
when  the  Northern  people  were  keyed  up  to  the  top  notch  of  war 
excitement,  President  Lincoln  was  renominated  by  the  Republican 


SCALE  OF  MILES 


OPERATIONS  IN  THE  EAST 


THE  CIVIL  WAR  377 

party,  with  its  accessions  of  War  Democrats  now  often  called  the 
Union  party,  for  the  office  of  President,  and  Andrew  Johnson,  a  War 
Democrat  and  loyal  Union  Governor  of  Tennessee,  was  , 

i  •  i  mi          i      r  i  T      Ine  renomi- 

named  for  the  vice  presidency.     The  platform  adopted    nation  of 

heartily  supported  the  war  and  demanded  a  constitutional 
amendment  to  follow  up  the  Emancipation  Proclamation 
and  provide  for  the  freedom  of  the  slaves  not  only  in  the  hostile  South 
ern  States  but  in  every  state  of  the  Union. 

It  was  a  dramatic  situation,  the  outcome  of  which  depended  almost 
entirely  on  the  issue  of  battles  still  unfought.  If  victory  should  come 
to  the  standards  of  the  North,  the  Republicans  would  The  despon_ 
have  the  advantage,  but  if  there  should  be  no  victories  in  dency  of  the 
the  field  for  the  Union  and  the  already  long-drawn-out  war  Repul 
should  become  more  unpopular,  the  Democrats  would  have  their  chance. 
Weeks  passed  after  the  Republican  convention,  bringing  not  only  no 
victories  to  clear  the  atmosphere  but  at  last  in  their  stead  a  decided 
repulse  of  the  Union  forces  at  Petersburg,  which  Grant  attempted  to 
take  by  assault  on  the  thirtieth  of  July.  To  capture  the  outpost, 
Grant's  forces  had  constructed  a  mine  underneath  the  town  at  great 
labor.  The  mine  was  exploded  and  much  havoc  wrought,  but  in  the 
confusion  the  Union  soldiers  failed  in  their  efforts  to  make  their  way 
into  the  stronghold.  A  deep  gloom  settled  down  on  the  supporters  of 
the  war.  Still  Grant  would  not  waver,  and  Lincoln  approved,  tele 
graphing  in  characteristic  fashion,  "Hold  on  with  a  bull-dog  grip  and 
chew  and  choke  as  much  as  possible."  Some  now  believed  that  the 
President  could  not  possibly  be  reelected  and  called  upon  him  to  de 
cline  the  renomination  and  make  room  for  another  to  lead  the  party; 
even  Lincoln  himself  recorded  his  belief  that  he  would  be  defeated. 

The   Democrats   met   in   national   convention   during   this   tense 
situation  and  gave  their  nomination  to  General  McClellan,  the  deposed 
idol  of  the  Army  of  the  Potomac,  no  longer  in  active    The  Demo- 
command,    and    wrote    into    their   platform    the    daring    cratic  nomi- 

j       "V-1  r    r   M  ,1       TT    •         -i         nation  and 

words,     r  our  years  of   failure  to  restore  the  Union  by    the  capture 

the  experiment  of  war."  Then,  like  a  burst  of  light  in  of  Atlanta, 
the  darkness,  came  the  exciting  announcement  of  General  Sherman's 
capture  of  Atlanta,  and  the  news  was  telegraphed  to  the  despairing 
Republican  hosts  one  day  after  the  adjournment  of  the  Democratic 
convention!  One  day  only  did  the  Democrats  enjoy  their  platform 
and  then  its  very  bottom  dropped  out,  and  the  gloom  of  the  Repub 
licans  was  turned  into  the  wildest  enthusiasm. 

For  four  months  Sherman  with  100,000  soldiers  had  been  battling 
his  way  from  Chattanooga  through  the  mountains  of  southern  Ten- 


378     TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND   SECTIONAL  STRIFE 


nessee  and  northern  Georgia,  his  every  step  contested  by  75,000  Con- 
Military  federates.  Atlanta,  his  objective,  was  the  railroad  and 
value  of  manufacturing  center  of  the  Confederacy,  a  collecting  and 
distributing  point  for  supplies  of  all  kinds,  and  its  loss 
was  a  tremendous  blow  to  the  Confederacy. 

The  enthusiasm  of  the  supporters  of  the  war  which  was  now 
kindled  was  sustained  to  the  day 
Other  timely  of  election  by  a  series 
victories.  of  otner  timely  victo 
ries.  General  Sheridan,  in  three 
battles  in  the  Shenandoah  Valley, 
worsted  General  Early,  who  had 
sought  by  a  raid  through  this  val 
ley  in  the  direction  of  Washington 
to  turn  Grant  away  from  Rich 
mond.  Sheridan  followed  up  his 
victories  by  laying  waste  the  rich 
valley  so  completely  that  no  fur 
ther  invasion  through  that  area 
was  to  be  feared.  After  his  men 
had  finished  their  work  of  de 
struction  it  was  said  that  "a  crow 
in  flying  from  Staunton  to  Win 
chester  must  carry  his  rations." 
Rear  Admiral  Farragut,  too, 
achieved  a  brilliant  victory  for 
the  Union  in  Mobile  Bay,  which 
closed  that  important  center  for 
blockade  running,  the  Confeder 
acy's  last  stronghold  on  the  Gulf. 

The  vote  in  the  electoral  colleges  stood  212  for  Lincoln  to  21  for 
McClellan,  the  latter  carrying  but  the  three  states  of  New  Jersey, 
The  reelec-  Delaware,  and  Kentucky.  Lincoln's  sweeping  victory 
tion  of  .  at  the  polls  encouraged  the  soldiers  to  fight  more  valiantly 
than  ever,  and  the  danger  of  official  repudiation  of  the 
Emancipation  Proclamation  and  of  the  cessation  of  the  war  before  the 
South  was  thoroughly  conquered  was  averted. 

THE   END   OF  THE   WAR 

Election  day  was  hardly  over  when  Sherman  burned  the  captured 
city  of  Atlanta  and  plunged  into  the  heart  of  the  Confederacy  through 
the  state  of  Georgia,  out  of  all  communication  with  the  North  and 


WILLIAM  T.  SHERMAN 


THE  CIVIL  WAR 


379 


with  his  own  base  of  supplies,  on  his  famous   "  March  to  the  Sea." 
The  Confederate  forces  under  Hood,  whose  business  it  was    The  last 
to  oppose   Sherman  while   Lee  operated  against   Grant    blows- 
in  Virginia,  attempted  to  turn  him  back  from  this  move;  but  Sherman 
boldly  divided  his  forces  and  left  Thomas  to  engage  Hood.     Thomas 
fulfilled  the  charge  and  utterly  routed  his  opponent  at  Nashville. 


Sherman's  army  found  no  military  force  to  oppose  it,  and  marched  in  a 
devastating  journey,  eating  and  burning  its  way  in  a  swath  sixty  miles 
wide  across  Georgia  to  the  sea.  In  four  weeks  Sherman  presented  the 
city  of  Savannah  to  the  nation  as  a  Christmas  present,  and  then  turned 
on  his  way  up  the  coast  toward  Grant  in  Virginia,  prepared  to  catch  Lee 
if  the  latter  tried  to  escape  to  the  south. 

Grant  opened  his  campaign  of  1865  with  his  army  on  the  south  cf 
Petersburg.    Sheridan,  who  had  moved  up  the  Shenandoah  Valley  and 
thence  had  encircled  Richmond  on  the  north  and  east  to   The  surren_ 
effect  a  junction  with  Grant,  pushed  the  federal  lines  west-   der  of  Lee 
ward  by  winning  the  battle  of  Five  Forks  on  April  i,  after  a  1   J° 
which  Grant  broke  through  Lee's  lengthening  and  thinning  lines  to  the 
capture  of  Petersburg  and  Richmond  on  April  2-3.    Lee  retreated  to  the 
west  between  the  James  and  the  Appomattox,  but  Sheridan  got  on  his 
west,  and,  cut  off,  the  Confederates  surrendered  to  Grant  at  Appomattox 
Court  House  April  9.    Johnston  surrendered  to  Sherman  April  26. 

The  week  from  the  capture  of  Petersburg  and  Richmond  to  the 
surrender  of  Lee  was  one  of  tremendous  excitement,  com-    The  last 
parable  only  to  the  week  of  excitement  in  April  four  years    week  of  the 
earlier,  ushered  in  by  the  firing  on  Fort  Sumter.     In  1861 
on  both  sides  were  foreboding  and  dread;  now  in   1865  on  the  one 


380      TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND   SECTIONAL  STRIFE 

side  was  the  excitement  of  victory,  and  on  the  other  the  despair  of  rec 
ognized  defeat. 

Within  a  week  after  the  surrender  at  Appomattox  Court  House  the 
joy  of  the  North  was  turned  into  mourning  by  the  shocking  news  that 
Theassassi-  an  actor>  John  Wilkes  Booth,  a  half-crazed  Southern 
nation  of  sympathizer,  who  did  not  realize  that  Lincoln  was  the 
Lincoln.1*  South's  best  friend,  and  that  the  wisdom  and  moderation 
of  the  President  would  be  sadly  needed  in  the  solution  of 
the  problems  that  were  to  follow,  had  entered  the  box  where  the 
President  was  sitting  in  Ford's  theater  in  Washington  and  shot  him 
through  the  head.  The  leader  was  struck  down  in  the  hour  of  triumph. 
The  poet,  Walt  WThitman,  voiced  the  anguish  of  the  North  in  the  lines: 

"O  Captain!  my  Captain!  our  fearful  trip  is  done, 
The  ship  has  weather'd  every  rack,  the  prize  we  sought  is  won, 
The  port  is  near,  the  bells  I  hear,  the  people  all  exulting, 
While  follow  eyes  the  steady  keel,  the  vessel  grim  and  daring; 
But  O  heart!  heart!  heart! 
O  the  bleeding  drops  of  red, 

Where  on  the  deck  my  Captain  lies, 
Fallen  cold  and  dead. 

"O  Captain!  my  Captain!  rise  up  and  hear  the  bells; 
Rise  up  —  for  you  the  flag  is  flung  —  for  you  the  bugle  trills, 
For  you  bouquets  and  ribbon 'd  wreaths  —  for  you  the  shores  a-crowding, 
For  you  they  call,  the  swaying  mass,  their  eager  faces  turning; 
Here  Captain!  dear  father! 

This  arm  beneath  your  head  ! 
It  is  some  dream  that  on  the  deck 
You've  fallen  cold  and  dead." 

My  Captain  does  not  answer,  his  lips  are  pale  and  still, 
My  father  does  not  feel  my  arm,  he  has  no  pulse  nor  will, 
The  ship  is  anchored  safe  and  sound,  its  voyage  closed  and  done, 
From  fearful  trip  the  victor  ship  comes  in  with  object  won;  • 
Exult  O  shores,  and  ring  O  bells! 
But  I  with  mournful  tread, 

Walk  the  deck  my  Captain  lies, 
Fallen  cold  and  dead. 

The  President's  assassin  fled  from  Washington  by  night  across  the 
Potomac  into  Virginia,  where  he  was  overtaken  and  shot  in  a  barn  by 

Union  soldiers  after  a  pursuit  of  twelve  days.  The 
Booth  and  treasonable  and  murderous  plot  embraced  other  members 
his  fellow-  o£  the  government.  Simultaneously  with  the  President's 

assassination,  an  assailant  stabbed  but  did  not  kill  Secre 
tary  of  State  Seward  as  he  lay  ill  in  bed;  the  man  was  apprehended, 
tried  by  a  court  martial,  and  hanged,  as  was  a  would-be  assassin  of 


THE  CIVIL  WAR  381 

Vice  President  Johnson,  who  also  failed  of  his  purpose.  Four  con 
spirators  in  all,  including  one  woman,  went  to  the  gallows;  three  were 
imprisoned  for  life  and  one  for  six  years. 

Both  houses  of  Congress  and  in  due  season  three-fourths  of  the  states 
followed  up  the  military  triumph  by  giving  their  formal  consent  to  the 
thirteenth  amendment  to  the  Constitution,  which  reads  Thethir- 
as  follows:  " Neither  slavery  nor  involuntary  servitude,  teenth  amend  - 

•  r    i  i    11  ment  of 

save  as  a  punishment  for  crime,  wnereoi  the  party  snail  the  Consti- 

have  been  duly  convicted,  shall  exist  within  the  United  tution- 
States,  or  any  place  subject  to  their  jurisdiction."  The  Emancipa 
tion  Proclamation  had  not  freed  the  slaves  in  the  loyal  Border 
States  nor  in  certain  parts  of  Louisiana  which  had  been  brought 
back  to  allegiance  to  the  United  States  by  conquest.  The  amend 
ment,  on  the  other  hand,  applied  to  every  part  of  the  United  States; 
it  insured  freedom  to  all  blacks  in  the  country  and  could  be  changed 
only  by  another  amendment.  The  Dred  Scott  Decision,  which  looked 
toward  the  legalizing  of  slavery  in  the  territories  and  probably  in  the 
states  as  well,  was  now  devoid  of  all  force. 

In  the  more  than  two  thousand  engagements  of  the  war,  probably 
360,000  men  on  the  Union  side  and  over  250,000  on  the  Confederate 
side  lost  their  lives.     The  expense  of  the  conflict  to  the    The  cost  of 
United   States   was   $3,250,000,000   above   the   ordinary    the  war- 
expenses  of  civil  administration.     In  1865  the  national  debt  was  $2,997,- 
000,000,  bearing  the  huge  annual  interest  of  $140,000,000.     The  cost 
of  the  war  on  the  Southern  side  is  unknown. 

As  in  the  time  of  the  Revolution  and  ever  since  that  time,  foreign 
immigrants  in  the  crisis  of  the  Civil  War  rendered  distinguished  services 
to  their  adopted  country.     The  patriotic  Germans  in  the    The  services 
critical  months  in  1861  in  Missouri  turned  the  tide  in  that    of  foreigners 
state  in  favor  of  the  Union.     Thousands  of  the  newcomers 
were  in  both  armies,  more,  undoubtedly,  in  the  ranks  of  the  Northern 
States,  which  had  always  attracted  the  foreigners  in  greater  numbers 
than  did  the  Southern  States.     There  were  whole  regiments  ef  men 
in  the  Union  army  unable  to  speak  the  English  language.     Of  the 
31,000,000  people  inhabiting  the  country  in  1860,  4,000,000,  or  approxi 
mately  thirteen  per  cent,  were  foreign  born. 

THE  NORTHERN  AND  THE  SOUTHERN  LEADERS 

The  leader  of  the  North  during  the  war  period  was  President 
Abraham  Lincoln.     He  was  born  of  poor  parents  Febru-    Abraham 
ary  12,  1809,  in  a  log  hut  in  the  slave  state  of  Kentucky,    Lincoln, 
and  was  reared  on  the  frontier  in  the  free  state  of  Illinois,  where 


382      TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND   SECTIONAL  STRIFE 

he  was  successively  rail-splitter,  flatboatman,  clerk  in  the  country 
grocery  store,  and  captain  in  the  state  militia,  until  by  his  own  efforts  he 
succeeded  in  obtaining  sufficient  education  to  practice  law.  Beyond 
membership  in  his  own  state  legislature  and  one  term  in  the  national 

House  of  Representatives  at 
Washington  during  the  Mexican 
war,  he  had  no  official  training 
for  the  chief  magistracy.  Some 
times  as  President  he  proved 
unfortunate  in  his  choice  of  ad 
visers,  occasionally  his  favorite 
measures  failed  of  enactment  in 
Congress,  such,  for  example,  as 
compensated  emancipation  in 
BIRTHPLACE  OF  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  the  Border  States  and  the  coloni 

zation  of  the  negroes  outside  the 

United  States,  and  from  time  to  time  he  made  mistakes.  His  use  of  the 
patronage  was  certainly  not  in  accordance  with  the  standards  of  the 
civil  service  of  the  present  day.  Yet  in  spite  of  his  limitations  and 
mistakes  he  was  the  greatest  President  since  the  time  of  Washington, 
and  by  his  broad  sympathies,  his  firmness,  judgment,  patience,  free 
dom  from  resentment,  and  tact,  he  brought  the  ship  of  state  safely 
through  the  troubled  waters.  Nature  endowed  him  with  a  keen  intel 
lect,  a  large  heart,  a  strong  will,  and  a  gentleness  of  character  that 
enabled  him  to  command  at  the  same  time  the  love  and  the  respect 
of  his  fellowmen. 

The  principles  which  he  gave  to  the  nation  in  his  second  inaugural 

address  were  the  mainspring  of  his  own  life:  "With  malice  toward 

none;  with  charity  for  all;  with  firmness  in  the  right,  as 

second  God  gives  us  to  see  the  right,  let  us  strive  on  to  finish  the 

address^         work  we  are  in;  to  bind  up  the  nation's  wounds;  to  care 

for  him  who  shall  have  borne  the  battle,  and  for  his  widow, 

and  his  orphan  —  to  do  all  which  may  achieve  and  cherish  a  just  and 

lasting  peace  among  ourselves,  and  with  all  nations." 

Without  the  education  of  the  schools,  Lincoln,  by  the  study  of  the 
Bible  and  Shakespeare,  made  himself  a  master  in  the  use  of  the  English 
Lincoln's  language.  Speaking  at  the  battlefield  of  Gettysburg, 
oration  at  November  19,  1863,  on  the  occasion  of  its  dedication  as  a 
urg*  national  soldiers'  cemetery,  he  followed  Edward  Everett, 
the  polished  orator  of  the  schools,  in  words  that  are  now  classic,  while 
those  of  Everett  are  forgotten.  "Fourscore  and  seven  years  ago  our 
fathers  brought  forth  on  this  continent  a  new  nation,  conceived  in 


THE  CIVIL  WAR 


383 


liberty,  and  dedicated  to  the  proposition  that  all  men  are  created  equal. 
Now  we  are  engaged  in  a  great  civil  war,  testing  whether  that  nation, 
or  any  nation  so  conceived  and  so  dedicated,  can  long  endure.  We 
are  met  on  a  great  battlefield  of  that  war.  We  have  come  to  dedicate 
a  portion  of  that  field  as  a  final  resting  place  for  those  who  here  gave 
their  lives  that  that  nation  might 
live.  It  is  altogether  fitting  and 
proper  that  we  should  do  this. 
But,  in  a  larger  sense,  we  can 
not  dedicate  —  we  cannot  con 
secrate  —  we  cannot  hallow  — 
this  ground.  The  brave  men, 
living  and  dead,  who  struggled 
here,  have  consecrated  it  far  be 
yond  our  poor  power  to  add  or  to 
detract.  The  world  will  little 
note  nor  long  remember  what  we 
say  here,  but  it  can  never  forget 
what  they  did  here.  It  is  for  us, 
the  living,  rather,  to  be  dedi 
cated  here  to  the  unfinished  work 
which  they  who  fought  here  have 
thus  far  so  nobly  advanced.  It 
is  rather  for  us  to  be  here  dedi 
cated  to  the  great  task  remaining 
before  us  —  that  from  these  hon 
ored  dead  we  take  increased  de-  ULYSSES  S.  GRANT 
votion  to  that  cause  for  which 

they  gave  the  last  full  measure  of  devotion ;  that  we  here  highly  resolve 
that  these  dead  shall  not  have  died  in  vain;   that  this  nation,  under 
God,  shall  have  a  new  birth  of  freedom;  and  that  government  of  the 
people,  by  the  people,  for  the  people,  shall  not  perish  from  the  earth." 
The  greatest  military  leader  of  the  North  was  General  Ulysses  S. 
Grant.     Born  in  Ohio  in  1822,  he  received  the  nation's  military  train 
ing  at  West  Point,  but  after  active  service  in  the  Mexican    Generai 
War  retired  from  the  army  to  civil  life.     At  thirty-nine    Ulysses  S. 
years  of  age,  when  the  first  call  to  arms  came  in  1861, 
he  was  a  clerk  in  a  saddlery  and  harness  shop  in  Galena,  Illinois.     His 
advance  in  military  command  was  steady  throughout  the  war.     Though 
not  rapid  and  brilliant  in  his  movements  on  the  field  of  battle,  he  was 
always  sure,  and  the  results  justified  his  promotion  in  every  case.     His 
tenacity  overcame  every  obstacle. 


384      TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND   SECTIONAL  STRIFE 


Jefferson  Davis,  the  one  President  of  the  Confederacy,  was  born 
in  Kentucky  in  1808,  a  few  miles  from  the  birthplace  of  Abraham  Lin- 
Jefferson  coin.  Both  families  early  moved  from  the  state,  the  one 
Davis.  to  free  Illinois  and  the  other  to  the  slave  state  of  Missis 

sippi.     After  his  education  at  West  Point,  Davis  saw  several  years  of 

active  service  in  the  army  and 
then  resigned  to  enter  politics. 
He  was  Secretary  of  War  under 
Pierce  and  later  United  States 
Senator  from  Mississippi.  When 
called  to  the  presidency  of  the 
Confederacy,  it  was  by  unanimous 
choice.  Gifted  with  a  wonderful 
capacity  for  hard  work,  he  allowed 
scarcely  a  detail  of  administration 
to  be  intrusted  to  subordinates. 
He  possessed  qualities  of  leader 
ship  that  held  the  confidence  and 
maintained  the  courage  of  the 
people  through  the  dark  days 
which  his  section  was  called  upon 
to  endure.  In  the  bitterness  that 
followed  the  assassination  of  Presi- 
JEFFERSON  DAVIS  dent  Lincoln,  Davis  was  suspected 

of   complicity  in   the   crime   and 

was  subjected  to  much  unjust  humiliation;  but  he  was  fully  cleared 
of  the  charges  in  the  minds  of  all  fair-minded  citizens.  His  name  is 
now  remembered  as  that  of  a  pure-minded  patriot,  who  followed  the 
right  as  he  saw  it.  He  lived  till  1889,  attended  in  his  last  years  by 
misfortune  and  sorrow. 

General  Robert  E.  Lee,  the  South's  greatest  military  leader,  was 
born  in  Virginia  in  1807,  one  year  before  Jefferson  Davis,  two  years 
General  before  Abraham  Lincoln,  and  fifteen  years  before  his  an- 

Robert  E.  tagonist,  Ulysses  S.  Grant.  He  had  a  military  education 
at  West  Point,  saw  service  in  the  regular  army  during  the 
Mexican  War,  and  when  secession  came  was  still  in  the  army  as  a  lieu 
tenant  colonel.  It  was  from  a  sense  of  duty  that  he  refused  an  offer  of 
high  command  in  the  Federal  army  and  linked  his  fortunes  with  those 
of  his  native  state.  To  a  friend  he  wrote,  when  the  storm  broke,  "I 
have  not  been  able  to  make  up  my  mind  to  raise  my  hands  against  my 
relatives,  my  children,  my  home."  His  wonderful  defense  of  Richmond 
entitles  him  to  rank  among  the  world's  greatest  defensive  commanders. 


THE  CIVIL  WAR 


385 


When  he  surrendered  to  General  Grant  at  Appomattox  Court  House,  his 
greatness  of  mind  and  heart  were 
as  conspicuous  as  in  his  brighter 
days.  He  might  easily  have 
dragged  out  a  weak  resistance  in 
the  mountains,  perhaps  for  years, 
but  recognizing  that  the  Con 
federacy  was  doomed,  for  the 
good  of  his  country  he  laid  down 
his  arms.  Equally  great  at  the 
historic  moment,  Grant  asked  the 
Southerners  to  go  home  and  go 
to  work,  and  he  allowed  them  to 
take  their  horses  with  them,  for, 
as  he  said,  "they  would  need 
them  in  the  spring  plowing." 
Lee  loyally  accepted  the  results 
of  the  war  and  earnestly  advised 
his  countrymen  to  take  the 
same  course.  From  1865  till  his 
death  in  1870  he  was  president 
of  a  small  college  of  less  than 
half  a  hundred  students  in  Lex 
ington,  Virginia,  then  called 
Washington  College,  but  since,  in  his  honor,  known  as  Washington 
and  Lee  University. 

SOCIAL  AND   INDUSTRIAL   CONDITIONS 

The  activities  of  the  nation  during  the  war  period  were  far  from 
being  confined  to  the  field  of  battle  and  the  political  arena.  The  people 
at  home  were  engaged  in  their  ordinary  pursuits  as  well 
as  in  the  extraordinary  labors  that  fell  to  them  as  their 
part  in  the  great  struggle.  As  soon  as  men  began  to  go  to 
war,  the  women  of  the  North  organized  themselves  into 
small  local  societies  to  provide  the  soldiers  with  the  extra  articles  of 
clothing  and  the  delicacies  of  food  that  the  government  could  not 
furnish;  and  shortly  the  United  States  Sanitary  Commission  was 
formed  to  carry  on  such  work  in  more  systematic  fashion. 

Under  the  guidance  of  this  Commission  the  conditions  of  camp  life 
were  improved,  assistance  was  given  in  caring  for  the  wounded  on  the 
field  of  battle,  and  the  work  of  the  hospitals  was  furthered.  The 
people  were  called  upon  to  raise  money  for  the  cause  and  to  furnish 


ROBERT  E.  LEE 


The  United 
States 
Sanitary 
Commission. 


386      TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND   SECTIONAL  STRIFE 


provisions  of  various  kinds.     Upon  the  capture  of  Atlanta  in  1864,  the 

first  telegram  sent  to  the  North  by  the  agents  of  the  Com- 
The  battle-  .  ^TTT  11-11-       i  •        i  i 

field  service      mission  ran,     We  are  established  in  this  place;  hurry  on 

°f  the.  .  large  quantities  of  vegetables."  A  certain  small  town  in 
Illinois,  after  such  a  call,  sent  to  the  front  five  hundred 
bushels  of  potatoes;  and  many  a  similar  contribution  came  from  the 
"onion  days"  and  "potato  days"  of  the  public  schools  and  the  "onion 
funds "  of  the  large  city  newspapers.  The  school  boys  and  girls  of  a 
small  New  England  city,  urged  one  year  to  devote  their  Fourth  of  July 
fire-cracker  money  to  buy  oranges  and  lemons  for  the  soldiers,  raised 
$543.43.  A  captain  of  the  io4th  Illinois  in  the  dead  of  winter  sent 
home  a  letter,  which  was  read  in  the  churches  of  a  little  village  in  that 
state,  stating  that  one-half  of  the  regiment  were  without  socks,  and 
on  Monday  morning  two  hundred  and  seventy-five  pairs  were  dis 
patched  to  the  men  by  mail.  To  the  twenty-five  thousand  who  had 
been  wounded  in  the  battle  of  Gettysburg  the  Sanitary  Commission 
distributed  $75,000  worth  of  food  and  clothing,  including  such  delicacies 
as  could  be  brought  to  them,  —  tea,  coffee,  poultry,  butter,  eggs,  bread, 
milk,  oranges,  lemons,  and  ice;  and  in  the  Wilderness  campaign  in 
1864  more  than  $500,000  was  similarly  expended  by  the  Commission. 
More  than  three  million  dollars  was  raised  for  the  work  by  the  soldiers' 
fairs  which  were  held  in  the  different  cities  and  towns. 

The  United  States  Christian  Commission,  in  its  self-imposed  task 
of  caring  for  the  moral  and  religious  condition  of  the  army,  through 
The  United  the  holding  of  religious  services,  the  distribution  of  Bibles, 
Christian  tracts,  and  other  literature,  and  the  ministration  to  the 
Commission  various  needs  of  the  soldiers  in  the  hospitals,  expended 
na?io°naier  $6,ooo,ooo.  Upon  the  families  of  the  soldiers  millions 
charities.  were  expended,  raised  by  private  organizations  through 
voluntary  subscription,  and  by  city  and  state  through  taxation. 
Never  before  had  so  much  been  done  in  a  great  war  for  the  care  and 
comfort  of  the  private  soldier  and  his  dependents. 

During  the  war  the  business  interests  of  the  North  passed  first 
through  a  period  of  severe  panic  and  then  through  one  of  great  pros- 
The  financial  Perity«  In  tne  excitement  produced  by  the  election  of 
panic  of  Lincoln  and  the  secession  of  the  Southern  States,  the 

L861<  country  was  plunged  into  a  panic  similar  to  that  of  1857. 
The  prospective  loss  of  the  trade  of  the  South,  which  bought  heavily 
in  the  North,  and  the  certain  loss  of  the  $300,000,000  already  due, 
which  the  Southern  Congress  formally  declared  was  not  to  be  paid, 
were  more  than  a  large  number  of  firms  could  weather,  and  many  went 
to  the  wall.  The  unsettled  state  of  the  public  mind,  always  attending 


THE  CIVIL  WAR  387 

the  outbreak  of  a  war,  added  to  the  gloom  of  the  business  world.  The 
banks,  too,  unmindful  of  the  lessons  of  the  panic  of  1837  and  1857, 
were  maintaining  in  their  vaults  too  small  cash  reserves  for  the  pay 
ment  of  their  notes,  and  in  several  of  the  northwestern  states  they  were 
unfortunately  basing  their  issues  of  notes  on  the  worthless  bonds  of 
the  seceded  states.  Eighty-nine  out  of  the  one  hundred  and  ten  banks 
of  Illinois  closed  their  doors,  while  the  city  of  Chicago  lost  practically 
all  its  banking  capital. 

Gradually  in  the  year  1862  a  wave  of  prosperity  set  in,  which  con 
tinued  to  the  end  of  the  war.     Business  adjusted  itself  to  the  altered 
conditions,  and  the  heavy  contracts  given  out  by  the  gov- 
ernment  to  manufacturers  in  every  section  of  the  country    recovery 
for  the  equipment  of  the  army  and  navy,  and  the  in- 
crease  in  prices  that  followed  the  issue  of  paper  money 
by  the  government,  contributed  to  the  commercial  revival. 

Rich  new  mines  of  gold  were  opened  up  in  Idaho  and  Montana 
during  the  war,  and  mining  industry  in  general  flourished.  The 
agricultural  output  was  greater  than  ever,  for  high  prices,  Agricultural, 

a  ready  market  in  Europe,  and  the  special  demands  of  the    mining,  and 
T |     ,  ,  1-1  r  •  manufactur- 

army  held  out  unusual  inducements  to  farmers  to  increase  ing  pros- 
production  in  every  possible  way.  Abundantly  supplied  Perity- 
with  raw  material  from  the  mines  and  the  farms,  and  well  served  by 
the  railroads  and  water  transportation  systems,  manufacturing  was 
also  on  the  increase.  The  woolen  mills  were  called  upon  to  supply  ma 
terial  for  the  uniforms  of  the  soldiers,  the  shoe  factories  to  make  their 
shoes,  and  the  iron  and  steel  mills  to  turn  out  munitions  of  war.  The 
output  of  sewing  machines  and  of  other  new  inventions  just  coming 
into  general  use  increased  tremendously,  and,  as  might  be  expected, 
the  manufacture  of  reapers  and  other  labor-saving  devices,  to  do  the 
work  of  the  men  absent  in  the  army,  was  especially  stimulated. 

City  after  city  inaugurated  its  first  street  railway  system  of  horse 
cars,  and  installed  its  first  fire  alarm  telegraph  and  steam  fire  engines; 
the  larger  cities  secured  free  delivery  of  mail,  and  the  post    Local  im- 
ofnce  money  order  system  and  the  railway  post  office    Pavements, 
first  went  into  operation  during  the  period. 

Ordinary  deposit  banks,  savings  banks,  and  insurance  companies 
found  the  times  prosperous.     It  was  easy  to  induce  people  to  loan 
money  to  the  government;  in  one  year  purchasers  were    Flourishing 
readily  found  for  its  bonds  to  the  amount  of  $500,000,000    finances. 
and  in  another  year  to  the  extent  of  $850,000,000.     Flourishing  busi 
ness  conditions,  as  well  as  a  loyal  recognition  of  the  necessity  of  a  large 
revenue  for  waging  the  war,  brought  it  about,  too,  that  extremely 


388      TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND   SECTIONAL  STRIFE 

heavy  internal  taxation  on  manufactured  goods  and  on  the  various 
trades  and  professions,  a  heavy  tax  on  incomes,  and  higher  tariff 
rates  were  borne  ungrudingly. 

The  Walker  Tariff  Act  of  1846  had  been  succeeded  by  another  law 
of  moderate  rates  in  1857,  after  which,  under  the  influence  of  the  two 
Changes  in  panics  of  1857  and  1860-1861,  the  tide  set  in  toward  higher 
the  tariff.  tariff  rates.  To  'satisfy  depressed  business  interests,  the 
Morrill  Tariff,  with  higher  rates,  was  put  on  the  statute  books  in  1861 
before  the  war  opened.  After  April,  1 86 1,  when,  to  the  usual  arguments 
in  favor  of  high  protection,  the  war  added  the  special  argument  of  the 
necessity  of  securing  increased  revenue  with  which  to  meet  the  vast 
expenses  of  the  operations  of  the  army  and  navy,  special  tariff  acts, 
imposing  higher  rates  on  various  articles,  were  enacted  in  every  ses 
sion  of  Congress  down  to  1865,  when  the  tariff  rates  reached  the 
highest  point  in  the  history  of  the  country  to  that  time. 

The  banking  system,  which  had  been  in  the  hands  of  the  states 
since  the  time  of  Andrew  Jackson  and  was  responsible  for  the  evils  of 
The  new  tne  wn<d-cat  notes  in  1860-1861,  was  changed  by  the 

national  passage  of  the  National  Banking  Act  of  1863,  which  pro 

vided  for  a  new  system  of  banks  chartered  by  the  United 
States  instead  of  by  the  states.  Under  this  act  the  new  national  banks 
were  to  be  governed,  not  by  a  central  board  of  directors  at  Washington, 
as  were  the  first  and  second  banks  of  the  United  States,  but  each  by  its 
own  local  board  of  directors  under  the  general  supervision  of  the  comp 
troller  of  the  currency  in  Washington;  and,  unlike  the  former  national 
banks,  the  new  banks  were  not  to  enjoy  the  privilege  of  holding  on 
deposit  the  money  of  the  United  States.  Government  receipts  were 
still  to  be  kept  in  the  vaults  of  the  treasury  at  Washington  and  in  the 
subtreasuries  in  various  cities.  The  new  institutions  were  to  issue 
their  notes  to  circulate  as  money,  but  these  notes,  unlike  those  of  the 
wild-cat  state  banks,  were  to  be  secured,  first,  by  a  deposit  of  United 
States  bonds  in  the  treasury  at  Washington,  and  second,  by  a  cash 
reserve  of  twenty-five  per  cent  of  its  liabilities,  which  was  to  be  main 
tained  by  each  bank  in  its  own  vaults  for  purposes  of  redemption.  In 
order  to  force  the  banks  to  give  up  their  state  charters  and  come  under 
the  national  law,  a  very  heavy  tax  was  later  levied  by  Congress  on 
state  bank  issues,  and  almost  all  the  banks  of  the  country  took  out 
national  charters. 

There  was  no  gold  or  silver  in  circulation  as  money  at  this  period. 
These  coins  had  been  supplanted  by  the  paper  notes  of  the  banks,  by 
the  paper  fractional  currency,  and  by  the  paper  promises  of  the  United 
States,  known  as  " greenbacks."  The  "greenbacks,"  by  the  legal 


THE  CIVIL  WAR  389 

tender  law  made  lawful  money,  were  like  the  old  paper  money:  usetf 
during  and  after  the  War  of  Independence;  they  had  no    ^^ 
gold  or  silver  back  of  them,  and  therefore  they  went  up    fluctuating 
and  down  in  value,  when  measured  in  gold,  as  the  people    ^ ^£yfck " 
gained  or  lost  confidence  in  the  ability  of  the  government 
to  make  the  notes  good.     When  battles  went  against  the  government 
and  the  people  had  little  confidence  that  it  would  ever  be  able  to  meet 
its  obligations,  the  notes  fell  in   value,  whereas  victories  sent  their 
value  up. 

As  a  result  of  the  shifting  value  of  the  greenbacks  and  the  consequent 
rise  and  fall  in  prices,  the  profits  of  the  speculators  and  the  merchants 
who  had  commodities  to  sell  were  huge,  but  balanced    Resuits  of 
over  against  these  advantages  to  a  few  were  certain  evils,    the  unstable 
such  as  the  lagging  wages  of  laborers  and  of  all  who  lived 
on  salaries,  for  wages  never  rise  as  rapidly  as  prices. 

Education  suffered  but  little.  Vassar  College,  the  first  adequately 
equipped  institution  of  collegiate  rank  for  women  in  the  history  of  the 
country,  Massachusetts  Institute  of  Technology,  Cornell  The  cause 
University,  Lehigh  University,  the  University  of  Kansas,  of  education, 
and  various  other  higher  institutions  of  learning  were  founded  in  spite 
of  the  war.  The  public  schools  were  filled  to  overflowing.  No  matter 
how  fierce  the  struggle  on  the  field  of  battle,  no  matter  how  tre- 
mendcus  the  popular  excitement  in  the  North,  the  school  bell  rang  out 
as  usual  in  the  first  week  of  September,  and  day  after  day  thereafter 
summoned  the  youth  of  the  land  in  ever-increasing  numbers  to  their 
daily  tasks. 

The  circus,  the  theater,  and  the  opera,  every  form  of  amusement 
and  luxury,  were  never  more  popular.     "  Extravagance,  luxury,  these 
are  the  signs  of  the  times,"  declared  the  editor  of  the    Amusements 
New    York   Evening  Post.     "Who   at   the   North  would    and 
ever  think  of  war,  if  he  had  not  a  friend  in  the  army  or  did 
not  read  the  newspapers?     Go  into  Broadway  and  we  will  show  you 
what  is  meant  by  extravagance.     Ask  Stewart  about  the  demand  for 
cardel's-hair  shawls,  and  he  will  say  'monstrous.'     Ask  Tiffany  what 
kind  of  diamonds  are  called  for.     He  will  answer,  '  the  prodigious,' 
'as  near  hen's-egg  size  as  possible/  'price  no  object.'  ' 

Life  in  the  South  during  the  epoch  was  affected  by  two  great  blights 
from  which  the  North  was  free,  —  the  blockade  and  the  devastation  of 
invading  armies.  With  the  usual  shipments  both  from  Life  in  the 
Europe  and  from  the  Northern  States  cut  off,  articles  of  Confederacy, 
necessity  as  well  as  of  luxury  became  scarce.  These  could  not  be 
manufactured  in  the  South  itself,  because  there  was  neither  oppor- 


TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND  SECTIONAL  STRIFE 


THE  CIVIL  WAR  391 

tunity  nor  means  for  building  the  necessary  factories  and  securing 
the  needed  machinery,  nor  men  enough  to  carry  on  the  work.  To 
bacco  as  well  as  cotton  almost  ceased  to  have  value  on  account  of  the 
lack  of  an  outside  market,  and  both  products  were  destroyed  in  large 
quantities  to  prevent  their  falling  into  the  hands  of  the  invaders,  while 
the  planters  from  necessity  turned  to  the  cultivation  of  the  more  useful 
wheat  and  corn.  The  boast  that  "  Cotton  was  king,"  and  that  to 
secure  it  for  their  factories  the  British  would  break  the  blockade  and 
recognize  the  independence  of  the  Confederacy  was  never  realized. 
On  the  other  hand,  Great  Britain  suffered  from  failure  of  crops  for 
three  successive  years,  and  in  her  need  she  found  the  wheat  of  the 
United  States  well  nigh  indispensable.  The  very  year  when  her 
importations  of  wheat  from  the  United  States  were  at  their  highest, 
almost  no  cotton  at  all  arrived  from  the  Confederacy. 

The  South  could  boast  of  no  extensive  gold,  silver,  copper,  or  iron 
mines,  nor  of  petroleum  wells  and  extensive  supplies  of  salt.  Her 
railroads  fell  to  pieces  for  want  of  repairs.  She  continued  Severe 
to  care  for  education  as  she  had  time  and  money;  her  privations, 
soldiers  and  their  families  she  cared  for,  so  far  as  she  was  able,  and,  like 
the  North,  when  she  could  she  buried  herself  in  pleasures  and  amuse 
ments.  Dire  want,  however,  gave  little  opportunity  for  extravagance, 
and  by  1864  and  1865  even  the  richest  families  were  enduring  the  most 
trying  privations.  No  immigrants  came  to  her  shores  from  abroad, 
and  she  herself  contributed  little  to  the  settlement  of  a  Confederate 
frontier  in  the  West. 

One  fundamental  reason  for  the  success  of  the  North  is  plain.     The 
Confederacy  went  down,  not  from  the  inferior  ability  of  her  generals 
and  soldiers,  for  here  she  was  the  equal  of  her  rival,  but    Industrjai 
largely  because  she  was  overborne  by  superior  resources,    supremacy 
The  prosperous  North  raised  taxes  more  easily  and  in 
greater  amounts,  and  could  send  more  men  to  the  field  of  battle,  and 
clothe  and  equip  them  better.     The  war  proved  that  while  a  purely 
agricultural  society,  like  that  of  the  Southern  States,  devoted  almost 
entirely  to  one  industry  and  consequently  dependent  on  the  outside 
world  for  many  necessities,  could  live  well  and  happily  in  time  of  peace, 
it  could  not  maintain  itself  indefinitely  during  the  strain  of  blockade 
and  invading  armies. 

GENERAL  REFERENCES 

MORSE,  Abraham  Lincoln;  RHODES,  United  States,  III,  IV,  and  V;  I.  M.  TARBELL, 
Abraham  Lincoln;  NICOLAY  and  HAY,  Abraham  Lincoln;  F.  BANCROFT,  William  H. 
Seward;  HART,  Salmon  P.  Chase;  FISKE,  Mississippi  Valley;  C.  F.  ADAMS,  Charles 
Brands  Adams;  R.  E.  LEE,  Recollections  and  Letters  of  General  Robert  E.  Lee;  T.  N. 

26 


392      TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION  AND  SECTIONAL  STRIFE 

PAGE,  Robert  E.  Lee;  RHODES,  Lectures  on  the  American  Civil  War;  PAXSON,  Civil  War, 
C.  F.  ADAMS,  Studies,  203-414;  HARDING,  Orations,  382-420;  FIXE,  Social  and  Indus 
trial  Conditions. 

SPECIAL  TOPICS 

1.  THE  FIRING  ON  FORT  SUMTER.    Epochs,  VIII,  58-67;  RHODES,  United  States, 
III,  349-374;  Contemporaries,  IV,  211-227;  NICOLAY  and  HAY,  Abraham  Lincoln,  IV, 
44-109. 

2.  THE  EMANCIPATION  PROCLAMATION.    Epochs,  VIII,  107-111;  RHODES,  United 
States,  IV,  157-165;  FOSTER,  Century  of  Diplomacy,  392-397;  Contemporaries,  IV,  390- 
411 ;  C.  F.  ADAMS,  Charles  Francis  Adams,  291-305. 

3.  THE  ALABAMA.     Epochs,  VIII,  145-148;  RHODES,  United  States,  IV,  85-94, 
365-371,  and  510-511;  FOSTER,  Century  of  Diplomacy,  424-428;  Contemporaries,  IV, 
416-418,  and  550-556;  C.  F.  ADAMS,  Charles  Francis  Adams,  306-344,  and  377-397: 
HILL,  Decisive  Battles,  175-211;  Epochs,  VIII,  145-148,  and  IX,  159-174. 

4.  THE  TRENT  AFFAIR.    Epochs,  VIII,  81-90;  RHODES,  United  States,  III,  520; 
FOSTER,  Century  of  Diplomacy,  367-372;  Contemporaries,  IV,  298-300;  C.  F.  ADAMS, 
Charles  Francis  Adams,  210-239. 

5.  THE  ASSASSINATION  OF  PRESIDENT  LINCOLN.    RHODES,  United  States,  V,  139- 
161;  D.  M.  DEWiTT,  The  Assassination  of  President  Lincoln;  Epochs,  IX,  16-56; 
NICOLAY  and  HAY,  Abraham  Lincoln,  X,  277-325. 

6.  THE   UNITED   STATES   SANITARY   COMMISSION.     FITE,   Social  and  Industrial 
Conditions,  276-283;  RHODES,  United  States,  V,  244-259;  Contemporaries,  IV,  270-272. 

ILLUSTRATIVE  MATERIAL 

H.  W.  BEECHER,  Norwood;  W.  E.  BARTON,  A  Hero  in  Homespun;  CHAS.  F.  BROWNE 
(Artemus  Ward),  Sketches;  L.  M.  ALCOTT,  Hospital  Sketches;  S.  W.  MITCHELL,  In  War 
Time;  T.  B.  READ,  Sheridan's  Ride;  E.  C.  STEDMAN,  Kearney  at  Seven  Pines;  G.  W. 
CABLE,  The  Cavalier;  S.  CRANE,  Red  Badge  of  Courage;  LOWELL,  Biglow  Papers,  Second 
Series,  and  Harvard  Commemoration  Ode;  HOLMES,  In  War  Time;  LONGFELLOW,  The 
Cumberland;  J.  T.  TROWBRIDGE,  Cudjo's  Cave;  W.  CHURCHILL,  The  Crisis;  T.  N.  PAGE, 
Two  Little  Confederates;  M.  R.  S.  ANDREWS,  Perfect  Tribute;  BRYANT,  Our  Country's 
Call;  WHITMAN,  My  Captain. 

SUGGESTIVE  QUESTIONS 

Did  Lincoln  make  a  mistake  in  sending  the  relief  expedition  to  Fort  Sumter?  Did 
Davis  make  a  mistake  in  ordering  his  troops  to  fire  on  Sumter?  Was  Lincoln's  declara 
tion  of  a  blockade  a  mistake?  Compare  the  North's  insistence  on  holding  the  Mis 
sissippi  with  that  of  the  frontiersmen  of  Kentucky  and  Tennessee  on  holding  the  same 
river  from  1783  to  1795.  What  was  the  importance  of  sea  power  during  the  war? 
What  were  the  services  of  Stonewall  Jackson  to  the  Confederacy?  What  was  Lincoln's 
Border  State  policy?  What  arguments  can  you  give  for  and  against  the  use  of  negro 
soldiers  in  the  Union  army?  Compare  the  generalship  of  Grant  and  Lee,  of  Nathaniel 
Greene  and  Stonewall  Jackson.  WThat  was  Lincoln's  policy  toward  Great  Britain? 
Give  a  history  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine  down  to  1865.  What  would  have  been  the 
probable  effect  on  the  outcome  of  the  war  of  the  election  of  McClellan?  How  do  you 
account  for  the  surrender  by  the  states  to  the  United  States  of  the  control  of  the  banking 
system,  which  the  states  had  won  in  the  days  of  Jackson?  What  was  the  fundamental 
reason  for  the  success  of  the  Union?  What  were  the  leading  issues  in  current  politics 
before  the  people  in  the  presidential  campaign  of  1864?  State  the  difference  between 
McClellan's  and  Grant's  plans  for  the  capture  of  Richmond.  In  what  important 
respects  did  conditions  in  the  South  differ  from  those  in  the  North  in  1860? 


PART   VII 
AN   ERA   OF   INDUSTRIAL   DEVELOPMENT 

CHAPTER    XXIV 
ECONOMIC   RECONSTRUCTION 

THE  NEW  ERA 

IN  the  crisis  1861-1865,  the  necessity  of  withdrawing  millions  of 
men  from  the  productive  pursuits  of  peace  and  supporting  them  in 
the  destructive  work  of  war  made  unusual  demands  upon  Economic 
the  nation  and  called  forth  or  suggested  new  methods  of  chanses. 
developing  and  making  use  of  its  natural  resources.  The  vast  riches 
of  the  United  States  had  never  been  appreciated  before  this  strain 
was  put  upon  them,  but  the  forces  set  in  motion  by  the  extraor 
dinary  circumstances,  far  from  ceasing  with  the  war,  continued  after 
peace  was  declared,  and  the  era  after  1865  was  one  of  pronounced 
industrial  development.  New  principles  of  industrial  organization 
were  adopted,  affecting  the  life  of  every  citizen.  Questions  of  business 
method  came  to  the  front.  The  effect  of  big  business  on  the  general 
welfare,  the  warfare  of  capital  and  labor,  the  proper  means  of  develop 
ing  and  conserving  natural  resources,  these  and  related  problems 
pressed  for  solution.  At  first  private  organizations  dealt  with  these 
questions,  gradually  political  parties,  state  legislatures,  and  finally 
the  national  legislature  took  them  up,  until  by  1900  they  were  foremost 
topics  in  the  nation's  politics. 

In  the  realm  of  politics  the  prominent  new  feature  of  the  period  after 
1865  was  the  growing  alliance  between  politics  and  business.     Aside 
from  this  tendency,  political  life  was  characterized  by    Political 
development  along  old  lines.     In  the  triumph  of  the  North,    changes. 
Washington's  and  Jackson's  conception  of  a  strong  central  government, 
which  had  been  gaining  ground  in  the  ante-bellum  era,  received  the 
sanction  of  a  victory  at  arms.     Questions  of  sectional  interest  were 
bound  still  to  arise,  but  never  since  the  great  struggle  has  the  spirit  of 
sectionalism  arrayed  itself  against  the  national  government  to  the 
point  of  armed  antagonism.     The  right  of  the  national  government 

393 


394  AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 

to  coerce  a  disobedient  state  was  vindicated;  the  extreme  right  of 
secession  was  discredited  and  nationalism  rendered  triumphant  over 
states'  rights.  The  democracy  of  Jefferson  and  Jackson  won  new 
victories  over  conservative  aristocracy  in  the  emancipation  of  the 
blacks  and  in  the  opening  up  of  new  opportunities  to  the  poor  Southern 
whites.  These  were  great  achievements,  but  they  were  accomplished 
at  the  expense  of  a  long  train  of  evils,  among  which  were  the  temporary 
destruction  of  the  prosperity  of  the  Southern  States  and  the  perplexities 
throughout  the  Union  of  caring  for  the  freedmen.  As  the  first  great 
era  in  the  history  of  the'  United  States  as  a  nation  began  when  Wash 
ington  was  President,  as  the  second  took  shape  during  the  presidency  of 
Thomas  Jefferson  and  the  third  during  that  of  Andrew  Jackson,  so  the 
opening  of  the  fourth  is  associated  with  the  Civil  War  era  of  Abraham 
Lincoln. 

INDUSTRIAL   PROGRESS 

A  notable  characteristic  of  the  economic  life  of  the  country  when 
it  emerged  from  Civil  War  was  the  tendency  of  capital  toward  consolida 
tion  and  monopoly.  Said  the  Commercial  and  Financial 
JohnesolPida-°f  Chronicle  of  New  York  in  1866:  " There  is  an  increasing 
tion  in  the  tendency  in  our  capital  to  move  in  larger  masses  than 
world?88  formerly.  Small  business  firms  compete  at  more  dis 

advantage  with  richer  houses,  and  are  gradually  being 
absorbed  into  them.  .  .  .  The  power  accumulating  in  the  moneyed 
classes  from  the  concentration  of  capital  in  large  masses  is  attract 
ing  the  attention  of  close  observers  of  the  money  market.  It  is  one 
of  the  signs  of  the  times  and  will  probably  exert  no  small  influence  over 
the  future  growth  of  our  industrial  and  commercial  enterprise."  The 
small  industrial  units  and  the  free  competition  of  earlier  days  were 
passing.  Combination  was  the  rule  of  the  hour,  a  movement  to  merge 
isolated,  competing  and  often  hostile  units  into  larger  and  more  har 
monious  groups. 

The  formation  of  larger  industrial  units  was  especially  conspicuous 
in  the  railway  world.  While  the  war  still  persisted,  two  small  roads 
Railroad  con-  in  Maine  united  to  form  the  Maine  Central;  seven  roads 
solidation.  from  Boston  to  Ogdensburg,  New  York,  combined;  the 
Erie  absorbed  a  number  of  small  rivals;  the  Pennsylvania  gained 
possession  of  the  Pittsburg,  Fort  Wayne  and  Chicago,  and  other 
smaller  roads;  and  the  Chicago  and  Northwestern  absorbed  numerous 
competitors  north  and  west  of  Chicago. 

After  the  war  was  over  the  five  lines  between  Buffalo  and  Chicago 
along  the  southern  shores  of  Lake  Erie  reached  a  common  agreement 


ECONOMIC  RECONSTRUCTION  395 

in  the  formation  of  the  Lake  Shore  in  1867,  and  in  the  same  year  two 
roads,  for  a  long  time  bitter  rivals,  combined  and  formed  the  Boston 
and  Albany.  The  New  York  Central  and  the  Hudson  River  combined 
in  1868.  These  consolidations  were  not  accomplished  without  bitter 
opposition  from  the  general  public.  The  proposed  capital  of  the  new 
Boston  and  Albany,  $15,000,000,  was  denounced  in  Massachusetts  as 
"monstrous"  and  " unheard  of,"  a  decided  menace  to  the  politics  of  the 
state. 

Another  typical  example  of  the  combination  of  capital  was  the 
progress  of  the  Western  Union  Telegraph  Company.  There  were  over 
fifty  telegraph  companies  in  the  United  States  in  1851, 
when  the  Western  Union  was  formed  to  control  a  line  o 
from  Buffalo,  New  York,  to  Louisville,  Kentucky.  In  ern  Union 
its  first  five  years  the  new  company  absorbed  eleven  comparer, 
small  lines  in  the  state  of  Ohio  alone.  Growth  and  con 
solidation  reached  its  climax  during  the  "telegraph  fever,"  1861-1865. 
Western  Union  interests  completed  the  first  telegraph  to  the  Pacific 
in  the  late  fall  of  1861,  and  soon,  by  absorbing  numerous  small  com 
panies,  that  enterprising  company  extended  its  lines  to  the  Atlantic. 
At  the  same  time  rival  companies  stretched  at  least  fifteen  thousand 
miles  of  new  wires,  but  in  1866  the  Western  Union,  by  taking  over  its 
leading  rivals,  placed  twenty-five  thousand  more  miles  of  wire  under  its 
control.  A  monopoly  was  created  with  huge  profits  to  the  company, 
but  it  was  a  monopoly  which  was  at  that  time  quite  generally  wel 
comed,  for  the  public  rejoiced  in  the  increased  uniformity  of  the 
service  secured  by  the  destruction  of  competition. 

The  same  consolidation  of  competing  units  went  on  among  manu 
facturing  concerns.     The  world's  greatest  monopoly,   the   Standard 
Oil  Company,  was  initiated  in  1867  by  the  union  of  five    consoiida- 
independent  refineries  and  rapidly  took  over  almost  the    tion  in  manu- 
whole  of  the  oil  industry  of  the  country.     Thousands  of    facturins- 
other  separate  manufacturing  industries  were    swallowed  up  in  like 
manner  by  larger  organizations. 

In  accounting  for  the  formation  of  the  Standard  Oil  Company,  John 
D.  Rockefeller,  its  head,  testified  before  the  United  States  Industrial 
Commission  as  follows :  "  The  cause  leading  to  its  formation    Explanation 
was  the  desire  to  unite  our  skill  and  capital  in  order  to    of  the 
carry  on  a  business  of  magnitude  and  importance  in  place    3  novement- 
of  the  small  business  that  each   separately  had  theretofore   carried 
on."     This  was  the  keynote  in  other  lines  of  industry  as  well.     An 
internal  revenue  tax  on  sales,  imposed  as  a  war  measure,  hastened 
the  movement  along  many  lines.     The  cotton  manufacturer,  whose 


396  AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 

business  it  was  to  spin  cotton  into  yarn,  upon  selling  his  finished  product 
paid  a  tax,  as  did  the  weaver,  the  dyer,  etc.  If  the  cotton  manufacturer 
could  afford  to  enlarge  his  plant  in  order  not  only  to  spin  but  also  to 
weave,  or  if  he  could  unite  his  business  with  that  of  some  weaver,  he 
escaped  one  of  these  taxes  and  if  he  could  take  in  a  dye-works,  he 
escaped  another.  Here  was  one  force  driving  small  concerns  together. 
Then,  too,  as  the  country  became  more  widely  settled  the  commercial 
world  felt  the  need  of  uniformity  in  the  transaction  of  business  on  a 
large  scale  and  over  a  large  area;  and  it  was  moved  also  by  the  necessity 
of  lowering  the  expense  of  management  and  eliminating  the  low  rates 
of  profit  resulting  from  "cut-throat"  competition,  as  the  manufacturing 
establishments  the  country  over  became  able,  because  of  improved 
transportation  facilities,  to  vie  with  one  another  in  the  same  markets. 

The  abundance  of  ready  capital  and  the  growth  of  large  fortunes 
during  the  Civil  War  added  to  the  tendency  to  consolidate.  There 
The  growth  were  men  witn  money  to  finance  large  undertakings.  In 
of  large  the  middle  of  the  war  the  New  York  Independent  asserted 

that  twenty  years  back  there  had  not  been  five  men  in 
the  whole  United  States  worth  as  much  as  $5,000,000  and  not 
twenty  worth  over  $1,000,000,  but  that  in  1864  there  were  in  New 
York  alone  several  hundred  men  worth  $1,000,000  and  some  worth 
$20,000,000. 

In  spite  of  the  justification  for  the  changes  going  on,  the  friends 
of  the  competitive  system  of  industry  sounded  a  warning  that  con- 
The  dangers  solidation,  unless  checked,  would  lead  to  monopoly  and  to 
of  monopoly.  ^he  high  prices  that  only  a  monopoly  can  impose. 

Rapid  construction  of  new  transportation  lines  accompanied  the 
consolidation  of  lines  already  constructed.  In  the  eight  years  after 
Rapid  t^Le  c^ose  °f  t^ie  war>  ran<road  construction  was  as  exten- 

railroad  sive  as  in  the  previous  thirty-five  years,  the  35,000  miles 

on'  of  line  in  operation  in  1865  reaching  70,000  in  1873. 
Even  the  astonishing  record  of  the  decade  of  the  fifties  was  eclipsed. 

A  most  important  step  in  national  development  was  the  completion 
of  the  first  railroad  to  the  Pacific  'coast,  the  Union  Pacific,  by  far  the 
The  Union  longest  line  of  transportation  in  the  country  and  the 
Pacific  largest  system  under  one  management.  The  secession 

of  the  Southern  States  and  the  ensuing  war  conditions 
had  added  emphasis  to  the  demand  for  this  road,  to  bind  together  the 
West  and  the  East  and  by  closer  commercial  relations  render  the  Pa 
cific  States  an  integral  part  of  the  Union.  Congress  sanctioned  the 
line  in  1862  and  made  a  grant  to  it  of  $50,000,000  in  United  States 
bonds  and  20,000,000  acres  of  public  lands  to  assist  in  paying  the  cost 


ECONOMIC  RECONSTRUCTION 


397 


of  construction.  The  first  rails  were  laid  in  1864.  After  peace  was 
declared  the  reunited  country  followed  the  progress  of  the  road  with 
extraordinary  interest,  just  as  it  had  watched  the  progress  of  the 
Erie  Canal  forty  years  before.  Along  hundreds  of  miles  of  the  way 
the  laborers  required  the  protection  of  soldiers  against  the  Indians, 
and  on  many  occasions  the  laborers  themselves  were  forced  to  turn 


THE  COMPLETION  OF  THE  UNION  PACIFIC  AND  CENTRAL  PACIFIC  RAILROAD 

soldiers.  At  Ogden,  Utah,  where  the  eastern  and  western  construction 
gangs  came  together  in  1869,  a  silver  sledge  hammer  was  used  to  drive 
the  last  three  spikes,  one  of  gold,  silver,  and  iron  from  Arizona  one  of 
silver  from  Nevada,  and  one  of  gold  from  California;  connecting  tele 
graph  wires,  which  had  succeeded  in  spanning  the  continent  before  the 
railroads,  reported  the  last  strokes  in  most  of  the  cities  from  the  Atlantic 
to  the  Pacific.  Although  at  present  there  are  seven  transcontinental 
roads,  this  first  road  to  the  Pacific  coast  was  a  great  achievement  for 
the  time  and  the  nation's  greatest  internal  improvement  up  to  that 
day.  The  first  telegraph  to  the  Pacific  went  into  operation  in  1861, 
but  the  "pony  express,"  which  started  at  about  the  same  time,  re 
mained  the  only  means  of  carrying  the  mail  over  the  plains  till  the 
advent  of  the  railroad. 

When  Morse  invented  the  electric  telegraph  he  predicted  that  his 
invention  would  some  day  be  used  to  carry  messages  under  the  water 
as  well  as  over  the  land.  Progress  came  slowly.  At  first  cables  under 


398  AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 

water  were  stretched  for  short  distances  in  rivers  and  harbors,  then 
for  longer  distances,  as  for  instance,  for  some  hundreds  of  miles  in  the 
Mediterranean  Sea  from  the  Island  of  Malta  to  Alexandria  in  Egypt. 
To  the  American  capitalist,  Cyrus  W.  Field,  and  to  the  English  engineer 
and  scientist,  William  Thomson  (Lord  Kelvin)  is  due  the  credit  for  bring 
ing  to  completion  the  present  Atlantic  cable.  The  first  At- 
cable.  * £  lantic  cable  was  stretched  in  1858,  but  ceased  to  work  after 

a  few  weeks;  the  Civil  War  intervened,  and  ultimate  success 
was  not  achieved  till  1866.  From  that  time  on,  Europe  and  America  have 
been  in  instant  communication.  The  Western  Union  Telegraph  Company 
was  at  the  same  time  engaged  in  stretching  its  wires  along  the  shores  of 
the  Pacific  north  from  San  Francisco  to  Alaska,  whence  a  short  cable  was 
to  lead  to  Asiatic  Russia  or  Siberia  and  overland  wires  to  St.  Petersburg 
and  Western  Europe.  This  enterprise  was  never  finished,  for  the  cable 
under  the  Atlantic  to  carry  messages  between  the  two  hemispheres  was 
completed  first;  but  there  was  universal  admiration  for  the  daring  of 
the  telegraph  company  which  conceived  the  project. 

A  second  characteristic  of  the  economic  life  of  the  era  succeeding 
the  war  was  the  preference  of  capital  for  the  stock  corporation,  as  a 
The  growth  form  of  business  organization,  to  the  partnership  which 
of  stock  had  prevailed  when  economic  units  were  smaller.  There 

ins'  had  been  corporations  in  colonial  times,  such  as  the 
London  and  Plymouth  companies,  trie  Massachusetts  Bay  Company, 
and  the  Hudson  Bay  Company.  In  Washington's  day  and  later  there 
were  turnpike  and  canal  corporations,  and  after  1830  railroad  cor 
porations.  By  1865  corporations  were  spreading  rapidly  throughout 
the  whole  industrial  world,  especially  to  mining  and  manufacturing 
enterprises. 

A  corporation  is  usually  composed  of  more  members  than  a  partner 
ship;  its  life  does  not  depend  upon  the  life  of  its  original  members,  while 
Character-  a  partnership  continues  only  so  long  as  its  members 
istics  of  survive;  and  in  a  corporation  the  will  of  a  majority  con- 

>ns*  trols,  whereas  a  partnership  is  usually  governed  by  the 
unanimous  voice  of  the  partners.  The  affairs  of  a  stock  corporation 
are  governed  by  a  small  board  of  directors,  acting  for  the  shareholders. 
For  the  payment  of  the  debts  of  a  corporation  the  members  are  gen 
erally  liable  for  no  more  than  the  amount  of  their  stock,  while  a  partner 
is  usually  liable  for  all  the  debts  of  the  firm.  The  stock  of  a  corpora 
tion  is  divided  into  shares,  which  the  shareholders  may  sell  at  will, 
while  the  transfer  of  an  interest  in  a  partnership  usually  requires  the 
consent  of  all  the  partners. 

As  its  name  indicates,  a  stock  exchange  is  a  place  where  stocks, 


ECONOMIC  RECONSTRUCTION  399 

that  is,  shares  in  a  corporation,  may  be  exchanged.     Exchanges  had 
existed  before  1861,  but  during  the  war  they  enlarged    The  stock 
their  operations  tremendously  and  assumed  great  impor-    exchange, 
tance  in  the  industrial  age  following.     The  shares  of  the  new  corpora 
tions  found  their  way  to  the  exchanges,  where,  in  the  prevailing  spirit 
of  speculation  during  the  war  period,  they  changed  hands  rapidly. 

The  extension  of  corporate  control  of  industry  had  pronounced 
effects  in  the  labor  world.     The  close  personal  relationship  between 
the  single  owner  of  a  small  manufacturing  concern  or  the 
few  members  of  a  partnership,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the    Business 
artisans   on   the   other  hand,   was   disappearing.     There    corporation 
was  instead  the  divided  ownership  of  shareholders,  who    world, 
bought  and  sold  their  shares  in  a  more  or  less  gambling 
spirit,  might  own  shares  in  numerous  concerns,  often  lived  far  away 
from  the  factory,  and  had  no  personal  knowledge  of  factory  conditions 
and  no  personal  interest  in  the  factory  except  as  it  furnished  them 
dividends.     Unlike  the  individual  owner,  who  in  the  management  of 
his  small  factory  looked  to  his  own  interests  and  to  the  closely  allied  in 
terests  of  his  men,  the  corporate  board  of  directors  looked  mainly  in  the 
other  direction  toward  the  interests  of  the  impersonal,  unsympathetic 
shareholders.     Directors,  appointed  by  thousands  or  tens  of  thousands 
of  shareholders    clamoring  for  dividends    and    dividends  alone,   can 
rarely  take  the  personal  interest  in  the  workmen  exhibited  by  the 
former  partnerships. 

Factory  conditions  changed  under  the  new  regime.  The  company 
boarding  house,  the  company  store,  and  payment  in  store  "orders," 
which,  when  administered  by  the  individual  owners  changed 
before  corporations  became  common,  were  often  beneficent  factory 
institutions,  gradually  changed  in  nature  under  the  control  ' 
of  directors,  until  they  were  generally  discarded  through  the  active 
opposition  of  the  men  themselves.  Corporations,  therefore,  were  they 
railroad,  manufacturing,  mining,  or  petroleum  companies,  contributed 
powerfully  toward  widening  the  chasm  between  capital  and  labor. 
The  very  size  of  the  corporation,  too,  its  increased  capital  and  greater 
power  in  the  industrial  world,  constituted  a  menace  to  labor  unknown 
in  the  days  of  partnerships.  As  industrial  corporations  tightened  their 
hold  on  modern  business  in  the  years  after  1865,  the  estrangements 
between  capital  and  labor  went  on  increasing.  Quarrels  over  hours, 
rates  of  wages,  and  what  not,  were  only  secondary  to  this  fundamental 
cause  of  grievance,  corporate  control  of  industry;  and  the  only  resort 
of  the  laborers  was  to  band  themselves  together  for  united  remon 
strance. 


400  AN   ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 

Few  of  the  labor  unions  of  the  thirties  survived  in  1861,  but  the 
movement  toward  such  organizations  which  set  in  again  during  the 
war  went  on  increasing  after  the  war  and  survives  to  the  present  day. 
The  progress  ^  number  of  the  national  unions  now  existing  were 
of  labor  formed  before  1870.  Over  the  local  and  national  unions 

of  the  single  trades  stood  the  Knights  of  Labor,  a  secret 
order  formed  in  1869,  for  the  purpose  of  protecting  the  interests  -of 
workmen  of  different  trades,  on  the  principle  that  an  injury  to  one 
was  the  concern  of  all.  By  1880  the  Knights  numbered  140,000, 
though  not  all  its  members  were  wage  earners,  for  men  of  all  occupa 
tions,  except  saloon  keepers,  gamblers,  bankers,  and  lawyers,  were 
admitted  as  members.  The  new  organization  sought  "to  secure  to  the 
workmen  the  full  enjoyment  of  the  wealth  they  create  and  sufficient 
leisure  to  develop  their  intellectual,  moral  and  social  faculties."  This 
organization  and  the  labor  movement  as  a  whole  were  not  active  in 
politics  for  a  number  of  years. 

Economic  conditions  following  the  war  presented  a  third  charac 
teristic,  which,  though  uncommendable,  must  be  recognized.  Corrup- 
Corruption  ^ion  was  ramP^nt  in  both  business  and  politics.  Probably 
in  business  the  decade  between  1865  and  1875  was  the  most  cor 
rupt  in  the  history  of  the  country.  Financial  circles 
were  stirred  by  a  long  series  of  defalcations  and  embezzlements. 
On  the  stock  exchange  the  motto  "Get  rich  quick"  was  never  so 
loosely  and  so  recklessly  carried  out.  One  broker,  Jay  Gould,  con 
trived  to  make  $12,000,000  from  questionable  manipulation  of  the 
stock  of  the  Erie  Railroad,  and  on  another  occasion,  on  "  Black  Friday," 
September  24,  1860,  he  made  at  least  $11,000,000  more  by  still  more 
questionable  speculation  in  gold.  The  Credit  Mobilier  scandal,  in 
connection  with  the  letting  of  contracts  for  the  Union  Pacific  Rail 
road,  involved  several  high  officials  in  the  national  government. 

There  was  widespread  corruption  in  official  life  in  both  state  and 
nation.  A  Secretary  of  War,  accused  of  letting  fraudulent  contracts 
Senator  *n  ^s  department,  found  it  necessary  to  resign  in  order 

Hoar's  to  escape  removal  from  office.     At  the  trial  of  this  official 

arraignment.  before  ^  United  States  Senate,  Senator  Hoar  of  Massa 
chusetts  made  the  following  sad  arraignment  of  contemporary  public 
life:  "My  own  public  life  has  been  a  very  brief  and  insignificant  one, 
extending  little  beyond  the  duration  of  a  single  term  of  senatorial  of 
fice;  but  in  that  brief  period  I  have  seen  five  judges  of  a  high  court  of 
the  United  States  driven  from  office  by  threats  of  impeachment  for  cor 
ruption  or  maladministration.  I  have  heard  the  taunt  from  friendliest 
lips,  that  when  the  United  States  presented  herself  in  the  East  to  take 


ECONOMIC  RECONSTRUCTION  401 

part  with  the  civilized  world  in  generous  competition  in  the  arts  of  life, 
the  only  product  of  her  institutions  in  which  she  surpassed  all  others 
beyond  question  was  her  corruption.  I  have  seen  in  the  state  in  the 
Union  foremost  in  power  and  wealth,  four  judges  of  her  courts  im 
peached  for  corruption,  and  the  political  administration  of  her  chief 
city  became  a  disgrace  and  a  byword  throughout  the  world.  I  have  seen 
the  Chairman  of  the  Committee  on  Military  Affairs  in  the  House,  now 
a  distinguished  member  of  this  court,  rise  in  his  place  and  demand  the 
expulsion  of  four  of  his  associates  for  making  sale  of  their  official 
privilege  of  selecting  the  youths  to  be  educated  at  our  great  military 
school.  When  the  greatest  railroad  of  the  world,  binding  together 
the  continent  and  uniting  the  two  great  seas  which  wash  our  shores, 
was  finished,  I  have  seen  our  national  triumph  and  exultation  turned 
to  bitterness  and  shame  by  the  unanimous  reports  of  three  commit 
tees  of  Congress  .  .  .  that  every  step  of  that  mighty  enterprise  had 
been  taken  in  fraud.  ...  I  have  heard  that  suspicion  haunts  the 
footsteps  of  the  trusted  companions  of  the  President." 

The  city,  whose  municipal  administration  Senator  Hoar  called  a 
"  disgrace  and  a  by- word    throughout   the  world,"  was   New  York. 
This  great  metropolis  was  in  the  hands  of  one  of  the    The  Tweed 
worst  political  rings  in  the  history  of  that  or  of  any  other    ring  in 
city.     William  M.  Tweed,  leader  of  Tammany  Hall,  the    ] 
regular  organization  of  the  Democratic  party  in  that  city,  was  the 
absolute  boss  of  the  city,  and  his  corrupt  rule  cost  the  public  hundreds 
of  millions  of  dollars.     In  the  construction  of  the  county  courthouse, 
begun  during  the  war,  to  cost  $250,000,  $10,000,000  was  consumed, 
while  the  debt  of  the  city  mounted  in  two  years  to  $80,000,000,  and  the 
tax-payers  had  little  to  show  for  their  money.     The  stealings  of  Tweed 
and  his  confederates  were  variously  estimated  at  from  $50,000,000  to 
$200,000,000.      Tweed  was  arrested,  convicted,  and    sent   to  prison, 
and  although  he  escaped  he  was  recaptured  and  died  in  prison. 

For  a  third  time,  the  same  general  set  of  causes  which  had  led  to 
economic  disaster  in  1837  and  1857  asserted  themselves  and  prosperity 
gave  way  to  the  panic  of  1873.  Reckless  speculation  on  The  panic 
borrowed  money,  construction  of  railroads,  and  the  of  1873- 
organization  of  other  enterprises  beyond  the  immediate  needs  of  the 
country,  had  gone  too  far.  In  September,  1873,  a  prominent  banking 
house  of  Philadelphia,  which  had  invested  too  heavily  in  the  projected 
second  railroad  to  the  Pacific,  known  as  the  Northern  Pacific,  closed 
its  doors.  The  next  day,  September  19,  was  a  second  Black  Friday  on 
the  New  York  Stock  Exchange.  The  favorite  stocks,  "New  York 
Central,"  "Erie,"  "Western  Union,"  fell  with  a  crash  ten  to  forty 


402 


AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 


points,  in  a  perfect  pandemonium  of  tumult  and  excitement.  All 
over  the  country  securities  were  rushed  to  the  market  at  greatly 
reduced  prices,  credit  business  was  refused,  and  debtors  were  pressed 
for  payment;  prices  of  agricultural  products  dropped,  factories  were 
shut  down,  and  corporations  went  to  the  wall.  It  was  the  first  financial 
panic  in  which  the  stock  exchange  played  an  important  part. 

In  1876  there  was  held  at  Philadelphia  a  great  exposition  to  cele 
brate  the  centennial  of  the  nation's  independence;  and  the  encouraging 
demonstration  there  made  of  the  foundations  on  which 
Centennial        the  industrial  life  of  the  United  States  rested,  proved  a 
strong  factor  in  hastening  the  recovery  of  business  from 
the    depression    of    the   panic.     In   four   months    nearly 
10,000,000  people  passed  through  the  gates  to  behold  the  wonderful 

achievements  of  human  industry 
and  invention  in  agriculture,  min 
ing,  transportation,  and  manufac 
turing.  Americans  saw  at  the 
exposition  for  the  first  time  the 
bicycle,  imported  from  Europe, 
and  the  first  form  of  the  useful 
American  invention  of  Alexander 
Graham  Bell,  then  known  as  the 
"lovers  telegraph,"  but  within 
another  year  perfected  as  the 
modern  telephone.  A  wave  of 
practical  invention  was  sweeping 
over  the  country.  The  Westing- 
house  airbrake  for  railroad  trains, 
the  typewriter,  the  automatic 
binder  on  reaping  machines, 
fountain  pens,  and  the  Bessemer 
steel  process  from  Europe  were 
still  new.  In  1877  Thomas  A. 
Edison  gave  to  the  world  the 
phonograph,  in  1879  the  mega 
phone  and  the  incandescent  electric  light,  and  in  1882  the  present 
electric  trolley  cars;  and  to  him  must  also  be  credited  various  improve 
ments  in  the  telegraph,  and  many  other  later  inventions,  including  the 
moving  picture  machine.  The  electric  arc  light  was  produced  by 
Charles  F.  Brush  in  1879.  The  linotype  for  setting  type  was  per 
fected  by  O.  Mergenthaler  in  1885. 


THOMAS  A.  EDISON 


ECONOMIC  RECONSTRUCTION  403 

THE   FRONTIER 

Outside  the  industrial  centers  of  the  East,  on  the  frontier  lands  of 
the  middle  and  far  West,  less  economic  readjustment  was  necessary 
during  and  after  the  war.     The  statesmen  at  the  head  of 
the  government  in  Washington,  even  while  the  Civil  War    sionaUegisla- 
was  raging,  had  not  lost  sight  of  the  necessity  of  fostering    ^gjor  the 
the  growth   of   the  agricultural   West  as  an  important 
national   asset.     It   sought   to  foster  European  immigration  by  the 


WAGON  TRAIN  ACROSS  THE  PLAINS 

creation  of  the  office  of  Commissioner  of  Immigration,  and  to  make  the 
public  lands  of  the  West  more  attractive  to  settlers  by  enacting  a 
special  law  prohibiting  slavery  in  all  the  territories  of  the  United  States, 
by  passing  the  long-desired  homestead  law,  which  gave  away  farms  of 
one  hundred  and  sixty  acres  each  to  bona  fide  settlers,  by  providing 
funds  for  agricultural  education  in  every  state,  and  by  liberally  extend 
ing  the  land  grant  railroad  policy  of  the  fifties  to  the  Union  Pacific  and 
Northern  Pacific  Railroads  and  to  various  other  roads  that  would 
penetrate  the  government  lands.  Finally  a  Commissioner  of  Agricul 
ture  was  appointed  to  collect  agricultural  statistics  and  to  promote 
agricultural  development. 

This  policy  of  the  government  was  preeminently  successful.  Even 
the  war  on  the  southern  battle  fields  put  little  stop  to  the  migration  of 
population  across  the  plains,  and  after  the  war  the  movement  went  on 


404 


AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 


at  a  rate  theretofore  unknown.  In  the  typical  war  year  of  1864  one 
Migration  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  people  crossed  the  great  plains, 
across  the  From  Council  Bluffs,  Iowa,  on  the  Missouri  River,  one 
traveler  during  this  year  wrote  as  follows:  "The  migra 
tion  is  said  never  to  have  been  exceeded.  When  you  approach  this 
town  the  ravines  and  gorges  are  white  with  the  covered  wagons  at 
rest.  Below  the  town  toward  the  river  long  wings  of  white  canvas 
stretch  away  on  either  side  into  the  soft  green  willows;  at  the  ferry  from 
a  quarter  to  a  half  mile  or  more  of  teams  all  the  time  await  their  turn 
to  cross.  ...  A  large  ferry  plying  rapidly  all  the  day  long  makes 
no  diminution  of  the  crowd."  With  railroads  radiating  all  over  the 
WTest,  the  never-ending  stream  of  settlers  increased. 

Minnesota  received  statehood  in  1858,  Oregon  in  1859,  Kansas  in 
New  states  1 86 1,  Nevada  in  1864,  Nebraska  in  1867,  and  Colorado, 
in  the  West,  ^he  centennial  state,  in  1876.  The  growth  of  population 
in  the  Western  States  is  shown  in  the  following  table: 


Made 
a 
State 

Population 

1850 

1860 

1870 

1880 

1890 

1  900 

1910 

Texas  
California  .  . 
Minnesota   .    .  . 
Oregon  
Kansas  
West  Virginia  .  . 
Nevada  
Nebraska  
Colorado  

1845 
1850 
1858 
1859 
1861 
1863 
1864 
1867 
1876 

212,000 
92,000 
6,OOO 
13,000 

604,000 
379,000 
172,000 
52,000 
107,000 

818,000 
560,000 
439,000 
90,000 
364,000 
442,000 
42,000 

122,000 

39,ooo 

1,591,000 
864,000 
780,000 
174,000 
gg6,ooo 
618,000 
62,000 
.452,000 
194,000 

2,235,000 
1,213,000 
1,310,000 
317,000 
1,428,000 
762,000 
47,000 
1,062,000 
412,000 

3,000,000 
1,485,000 
1,750,000 
413,000 
1,470,000 
958,000 
42,000 
1,066,000 
539,000 

3,896,000 
2,377,000 
2,075,000 
672,000 
1,690,000 

1,221,000 

81,000 
1,192,000 
799,000 

6,800 
28,000 
34,°oo 

The  steady  westward  march  of  population  was  accompanied  by 
the  inevitable  Indian  massacres,  which  had  characterized  similar 
The  Indian  movements  from  the  earliest  days  of  American  frontier 
Wars.  building.  During  the  second  year  of  the  war  the  Sioux 

Indians  killed  eight  hundred  men,  women,  and  children  in  Minnesota, 
and  destroyed  property  to  the  value  of  $5,000,000.  Escaping  punish 
ment  here,  they  pillaged  in  the  Valley  of  the  Missouri,  where  they  lay 
in  wait  for  immigrant  bands,  who  were  obliged  to  move  under  military 
escort.  The  Sioux  went  on  the  war-path  again  in  1868  on  account 
of  encroachment  upon  their  lands  in  Dakota  and  Montana  by  the 
bands  of  immigrants  on  their  way  to  the  Montana  gold  fields,  and  for 
two  years  they  continued  to  pillage  and  burn.  They  made  their  last 
stand  under  their  chief,  Sitting  Bull,  in  1876,  at  the  battle  of  Little 
Big  Horn  in  southern  Montana,  where  General  Custer  and  his  band  of 


ECONOMIC  RECONSTRUCTION  405 

two  hundred  and  sixty  men,  sent  against  them,  were  annihilated.  In 
1879  the  Sioux  accepted  the  yoke  of  the  whites  and  entered  upon  the 
reservation  prepared  for  them  in  southern  Dakota.  In  New  Mexico 
and  Arizona,  the  Comanches  and  Apaches  were  long  a  source  of  trouble 
to  the  whites,  but  were  finally  put  down.  The  Cheyennes  and  the 
Arapahoes  were  subdued  at  the  Battle  of  the  Washita  in  the  present 
state  of  Oklahoma  in  1868.  In  all  these  encounters  with  the  red  men 
in  the  sixties  and  seventies  the  whites,  under  Generals  Hancock,  Custer, 
Sheridan  and  Miles,  of  Civil  War  fame,  resorted,  perhaps  of  necessity, 
to  great  cruelty,  and  despite  their  depredations  much  sympathy  for 
the  Indians  was  aroused  throughout  the  nation.  General  Miles  has 
left  it  as  his  testimony  that  he  had  never  known  an  Indian  war  in 
which  the  whites  were  not  the  aggressors. 

The  Civil  War,  by  taking  the  young  men  off  to  the  camps  and 
battle-fields,  had  rapidly  popularized  the  use  of  labor-saving  machinery 
as  nothing  had  been  able  to  popularize  it  before.     Con 
servative  farmers,  who,  before  the  war,  when  labor  was    use  of  labor- 
cheap  and  plentiful,  failed  to  see  the  advantages  of  the  new  savins 
machinery,  after  the  outbreak  of  hostilities,  when  stared 
in  the  face  by  the  possibility  of  losing  their  crops  for  want  of  labor, 
looked  with  eager  interest  at  the  new  appliances.     Said  the  editor  of 
the  Scientific  American:  "In  conversation  a  few  days  since  with  a 
most  intelligent  western  farmer  he  told  us  that  manual  labor  was  so 
scarce  last  autumn  that  but  for  horse  rakes,  mowers,  and  reaping 
machines  one-half  of  the  crops  would  have  been  left  standing  in  the 
fields.     This  year  the  demand  for  reapers  has   been   so  great   that 
manufacturers  will  not  be  able  to  fill  their  orders.     Farming  is  com 
paratively  child's   play  to  what   it    was    twenty   years    ago,  before 
mowing,  reaping,  and  other   agricultural   machines   were  employed. 
The  severe  manual  labor  of  mowing,  raking,  pitching,  and  cradling  is 
now  performed  by  machinery  operated  by  horse  power,   and  man 
simply  oversees  the  operations  and  conducts  them  with  intelligence." 

The  McCormick  reaper,  which  appeared  first  in  the  thirties,  was 
improved  from  time  to  time,  till  it  not  only  gathered  the  grain  but 
separated  it  into  sheaves  and  bound  the  sheaves,  at  first    Agricultural 
with  wire,   later  with   twine.     Threshers,   small  in   size    machinery, 
and  run  by  horse  power,  accomplished  the  same  work  as  the  present 
machines,  though  less  effectively;  the  grain  was  threshed,  cleaned, 
measured,  and  the  straw  stacked  at  one  operation.     There  were  re 
volving  horserakes,  grain  drills,  two-horse  cultivators,  rotary  spaders, 
mowers,  and  steel  plows,  all  of  which  had  been  gradually  coming  into 
use  since  Andrew  Jackson's  time. 


406  AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 

Following  the  same  tendencies  that  had  produced  the  labor  unions 
and  the  combinations  of  capital,  organizations  of  farmers  appeared. 
The  The  society  of  Patrons  of  Husbandry  was  formed  in  1867 

Granger  to  advance  the  interests  of  the  farming  classes  and  par 

ticularly  to  secure  lower  rates  of  transportation.  The 
society,  made  up  of  local  lodges,  or  granges,  admitted  both  men  and 
women  into  its  ranks.  It  was  secret  and  was  designed  to  advance  the 
social  welfare  of  the  farming  classes  as  well  as  to  further  their  industrial 
interests,  and,  like  the  labor  unions,  it  did  not  at  first  go  into  politics. 
Within  eight  years  the  society  numbered  150,000  members,  recruited 
from  every  section  of  the  country.  A  similar  organization,  though 
not  a  secret  order,  known  as  the  Farmers'  Alliance,  and  more  openly 
political,  was  formed  in  New  York  in  1873  and  spread  rapidly  in  the 
western  part  of  the  country,  but  it  was  not  an  important  factor  till 
near  the  close  of  the  next  decade. 

On  the  treeless  and  grassy  plains  of  the  West  cattle-raising  on 
extensive  ranches  came  to  rank  with  agriculture  as  an  industry  of 
The  new  importance.  The  raising  of  cattle  had  been  an  occupation 
cattle  of  frontiersmen  from  the  very  first.  As  civilization 

pushed  westward,  cattle  raisers  had  been  in  the  vanguard, 
but  until  the  prairies  of  the  interior  were  reached,  the  industry  was 
small  and  rarely  attempted  to  supply  anything  beyond  local  needs. 
The  large  ranches  beyond  the  Mississippi,  common  by  the  latter  half 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  did  not  have  an  eastern  origin.  These  origi 
nated  rather  in  Mexico  and  spread  northward,  supplied  by  Mexican, 
and  after  the  independence  of  Texas  and  its  admission  into  the  Union, 
by  Texas,  steers.  The  grasses  of  the  plains  were  richer  and  sweeter, 
the  cattle  feeding  on  them  larger  and  fatter,  as  the  herds  penetrated 
farther  north.  Uncle  Sam's  public  lands  were  for  the  most  part  unoc 
cupied  and  were  free,  or  at  least  trespassing  on  them  could  not  be 
stopped.  So  irresistible  was  the  northward  trend  that  in  a  few  years 
after  the  Civil  War  not  only  Texas  but  also  Kansas,  Colorado, 
Nebraska,  Dakota,  Wyoming,  Montana  and  parts  of  Utah,  Nevada, 
Missouri,  Iowa  and  Illinois  were  covered  by  immense  herds. 

In  1857  Texas  cattle  began  to  be  driven  on  foot  overland  to 
Kansas  City  and  Chicago,  mainly  the  latter  city,  in  search  of  a 
The  over-  market.  The  war  intervened  to  stop  the  drive,  but  in 
land  drive.  -,^55  ft  began  again,  and  the  slaughter  and  dressing 
of  cattle  in  the  western  cities  quickly  constituted  a  great  industry. 
For  hundreds  of  miles  the  long  trails  across  the  plains  were  dotted 
with  herds  of  five  or  ten  thousand  cattle,  all  northward  going;  in 
1871,  600,000  cattle  crossed  the  Red  River  on  their  way  from  Texas. 


ECONOMIC  RECONSTRUCTION  407 

New  trails  were  gradually  developed;  railroads  came  in  a  few  years; 
and  in  the  seventies  and  early  eighties  millions  of  cattle  from  the 
plains  reached  the  western  slaughter-houses. 

The  cattle  ranch  was  not  limited  to  a  few  hundred  acres,  and  it  was 
not  stationary  like  the  homestead  of  the  ordinary  settler.     Nor  was 
it  encumbered  with  bars  and  fences.     Branded  with  the    DesCription 
owner's  mark,  which  was  usually  respected  as  a  full  and    of  the 
complete  title  of  ownership,  the  cattle  roved  free  over 
loosely  denned  ranges  hundreds  of  miles  in  extent.     At  the  "  round-up," 
which  was  "the  harvest  time  of  the  range,"  it  was  the  duty  of  the  cow 
boys  and  their  ponies  to  search  out  the  wanderers,  gather  them  to 
gether,  take  them  on  the  long  drive  to  market,  and  protect  them  from 
enemies  and  from  their  own  stampedes.     These  operations  sometimes 
lasted  for  several  months,  during  which  time  the  home  ranch  was 
deserted. 

Peace  did  not  always  reign  on  the  ranges,  which  were  so  far  removed 
from  regularly  administered  law  that  order  was  enforced  only  by 
the  cooperation  of  the  scattered  ranchmen  themselves.    Wars  on  the 
Droves  of  thousands  of  sheep  soon  came  to  appropriate    ranees' 
their  share  of  the  free  lands  and  free  grass,  and  the  ranchmen  could  not 
always  get  along  amicably  with  the  sheep  herders.     The  ranchmen 
themselves  often  waged  small  civil  wars  with  one  another  over  cattle- 
stealing,  the  misappropriation  of  brands,  the  extent  of  the  ranges,  and 
other  such  matters  as  were  bound  to  arise. 

Profits  were  large,  and  the  industry  for  a  time  received  a  tremendous 
impetus.     Cattle  bought  for  a  few  dollars,  raised  in  vast  numbers,  fed 
on  free  fodder,  and  needing  but  few  men  to  attend  them,    prosperity 
could  be  sold  in  several  years  for  four  or  five  times  their    of  the 
original  cost.     Conservative  capital  in  the  United  States    ranches- 
and  even  from  other  lands  poured  into  the  industry,  and  many  young 
men  from  the  Eastern  States,  attracted  by  the  prospects  of  wealth 
and  by  the  sturdy  independent  life  of  the  ranchmen,  went  into  the 
cattle  business. 

Up  to  1 86 1  the  slaughter  and  dressing  of  hogs,  cattle,  and  sheep, 
and  the  preparation  of  meat  products  for  the  market  had  been  on  a 
comparatively  small  scale,  and  had  been  confined,  with    Meatpack- 
a  few  exceptions,  almost  entirely  to  the  farms  and  to    ing  in  the 
small  country  towns;  but  in  the  course  of  the  war,  on    ' 
account  of  the  closing  of  the  Mississippi  and  the  consequent  diffi 
culties  of  marketing  the  large  corn  crops,  the  droves,  herds  and  flocks 
of  the  Northwest  increased  rapidly,  and  their  chief  sale  was  found 
in  the  western  cities,  where  the  number  of  slaughter-houses  rapidly 

27 


408  AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 

increased.  In  1860,  270,000  hogs  were  packed  in  Chicago,  but  in  a  single 
year  during  the  course  of  the  war  900,000.  The  industry  expanded  in 
other  western  centers  also,  though  on  a  smaller  scale  than  in  Chicago, 
where  one-third  of  the  hog-packing  industry  of  the  country  was  cen 
tered.  The  sudden  centralization  of  what  before  the  war  had  been  a 
domestic  industry  of  the  farms,  was  one  of  the  marked  changes  wrought 
by  the  war  in  the  industrial  life  of  the  nation. 

An  activity  of  the  plains  which  reached  its  height  about  1870  was 
the  buffalo  hunt.  Overland  travelers  west  of  the  Mississippi  were 
The  astounded  at  the  tens  of  thousands  of  buffaloes  which 

buffalo  seemed  to  envelop  them.  Buffaloes  moved,  as  no  other 

animals  ever  have,  in  great  multitudes,  covering  many 
square  miles.  In  swimming  the  rivers  they  often  obstructed  boats, 
on  the  plains  they  overwhelmed  travelers,  and  in  passing  railroad 
tracks  they  often  rushed  headlong  into  moving  trains  and  threatened 
to  derail  them.  Many  a  railroad  train  was  stopped  to  allow  the  herd 
to  pass.  By  a  strange  mixture  of  characteristics,  fierce  and  strong  as 
he  was,  the  buffalo  was  one  of  the  most  stupid  animals  known  to  man. 
He  was  slow  in  scenting  danger,  and  would  sometimes  stand  quietly 
by  with  no  other  apparent  emotion  than  that  of  stupid  wonder,  while 
his  companions  in  the  herd  were  slaughtered  by  the  hundred.  A 
traveler  of  1868,  crossing  the  plains  of  Kansas  for  one  hundred  and 
twenty  miles,  wrote:  "  We  passed  through  an  almost  unbroken  herd  of 
buffalo.  The  plains  were  blackened  with  them,  and  more  than  once 
the  train  had  to  stop  to  allow  unusually  large  herds  to  pass."  The 
same  traveler,  in  1872,  in  commenting  on  a  journey  of  one  hundred 
miles  in  Indian  Territory,  wrote:  "We  were  never  out  of  sight  of 
buffalo." 

The  construction  of  the  Union  Pacific  railroad  ultimately  divided 
the  buffaloes  into  a  northern  and  a  southern  herd;  and  a  competent 
An  estimate  authority  has  estimated  that  in  1871  the  southern  herd 

of  their  numbered  above  3,000,000  animals,  possibly  over  4,000,- 

numbers. 

ooo. 

.  Captain  John  C.  Fremont  of  the  United  States  army,  in  the  report 
of  one  of  his  exploring  expeditions  across  the  plains  in  the  forties, 

described  a  buffalo  hunt  in  the  following  graphic  Ian- 
Fremont's  .,.  -11  ±,  i  A 
description  guage:  As  we  were  riding  quietly  along  the  bank,  a  grand 

°fthe  .  herd  of  buffalo,  some  seven  or  eight  hundred  in  number, 

buffalo  hunt.  .         .  111 

came  crowding  up  from  the  river,  where  they  had  been 

to  drink,  and  commenced  crossing  the  plain  slowly,  eating  as  they 
went.  ...  It  was  too  fine  a  prospect  for  the  chase  to  be  lost,  and, 
halting  for  a  few  moments,  the  hunters  were  brought  up  and  sad- 


ECONOMIC  RECONSTRUCTION  409 

died,  and  Kit  Carson,  Maxwell,  and  I  started  together.  They  were 
somewhat  less  than  a  half-mile  distant,  and  we  rode  easily  along  until 
within  about  three  hundred  yards,  when  a  sudden  agitation,  a  wavering 
in  the  band,  and  a  galloping  to  and  fro  of  some  who  were  scattered 
along  the  skirts  gave  us  the  intimation  that  we  were  discovered.  .  .  . 
A  crowd  of  bulls,  as  usual,  brought  up  the  rear,  and  every  now  and 
then  some  of  them  faced  about,  and  then  dashed  on  after  the  band  a 
short  distance,  and  turned  and  looked  again,  as  if  more  than  half 
inclined  to  stand  and  fight.  In  a  few  moments,  however,  during 
which  we  had  been  quickening  our  pace,  me  rout  was  universal,  and 
we  were  going  over  the  ground  like  a  hurricane.  When  at  about 
thirty  yards,  we  gave  the  usual  shout  (the  hunter's  pas  de  charge),  and 
broke  into  the  herd.  We  entered  on  the  side,  the  mass  giving  away 
in  every  direction  in  their  heedless  course.  Many  of  the  bulls,  less 
active  and  less  fleet  than  the  cows,  paying  no  attention  to  the  ground, 
and  occupied  solely  with  the  hunter,  were  precipitated  to  the  earth 
with  great  force,  rolling  over  and  over  with  the  violence  of  the  shock, 
and  hardly  distinguishable  in  the  dust.  We  separated  on  entering, 
each  singling  out  his  game. 

uMy  horse  was  a  trained  hunter,  famous  in  the  West  under  the 
name  of  Proveau,  and  with  his  eyes  flashing,  and  the  foam  flying  from 
his  mouth,  sprang  on  after  the  cow  like  a  tiger.  In  a  few  moments  he 
brought  me  alongside  of  her,  and,  rising  in  the  stirrups,  I  fired  at  the 
distance  of  a  yard,  the  ball  entering  at  the  termination  of  the  long  hair 
and  passing  near  the  heart.  She  fell  headlong  at  the  report  of  the  gun, 
and,  checking  my  horse,  I  looked  around  for  my  companions.  At  a 
little  distance,  Kit  was  on  the  ground,  engaged  in  tying  his  horse  to 
the  horns  of  a  cow  which  he  was  preparing  to  cut  up.  Among  the 
scattered  bands,  at  some  distance  below,  I  caught  a  glimpse  of  Max 
well;  and  while  I  was  looking,  a  light  wreath  of  white  smoke  curled 
away  from  his  gun,  from  which  I  was  too  far  to  hear  the  report.  Nearer, 
and  between  me  and  the  hills,  toward  which  they  were  directing  their 
course,  was  the  body  of  the  herd,  and  giving  my  horse  the  rein,  we 
dashed  after  them.  A  thick  cloud  of  dust  hung  upon  their  rear, 
which  filled  my  mouth  and  eyes,  and  nearly  smothered  me.  In  the 
midst  of  this  I  could  see  nothing,  and  the  buffalo  were  not  distin 
guishable  until  within  thirty  feet.  They  crowded  together  more 
densely  still  as  I  came  upon  them,  and  rushed  along  in  such  a  compact 
body,  that  I  could  not  obtain  an  entrance  —  the  horse  almost  leaping 
upon  them.  In  a  few  moments  the  mass  divided  to  the  right  and  left, 
the  horns  clattering  with  a  noise  heard  above  everything  else,  and  my 
horse  darted  into  the  opening.  Five  or  six  bulls  charged  on  us  as  we 


410  AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 

dashed  along  the  line,  but  were  left  far  behind;  and  singling  out  a  cow, 
I  gave  her  my  fire;  but  struck  too  high."  .  .  . 

Indians  and  whites  alike  joined  in  the  slaughter  of  the  buffalo, 
sometimes  out  of  sheer  delight  in  the  hunt,  sometimes  to  secure  robes 
The  slaughter  and  meat.  After  the  railways  gave  ready  access  to  the 
of  the  herds,  hunting-grounds,  the  rate  of  extermination  was  rapidly 
accelerated.  The  hunt  in  the  south  reached  its  height  in  1872-1873, 
during  which  two  years  it  has  been  estimated  that  over  3,000,000 
animals  were  slaughtered  in  the  southern  herd  alone.  By  the  end 
of  1874  this  herd  had  ceased  to  exist.  The  northern  herd,  which 
was  somewhat  smaller,  survived  till  1883.  In  one  year  no  fewer  than 
five  thousand  white  hunters  were  on  the  northern  range,  some  killing 
as  many  as  2500  or  3000  animals  apiece.  Straggling  buffaloes  lingered 
a  few  years  after  the  herds  were  wiped  out,  but  by  the  twentieth 
century  wild  buffaloes  on  the  plains  were  creatures  of  the  past. 

GENERAL   REFERENCES 

PAXSON,  Last  American  Frontier:  S.  BOWLES,  Across  the  Continent;  R.  P.  PORTER, 
The  West  from  the  Census  of  1880;  R.  L.  STEVENSON,  Across  the  Plains. 

SPECIAL  TOPICS 

1.  THE  UNION  PACIFIC  RAILROAD.     RHODES,  United  States,  VII,  1-14;  PAXSON, 
Last  American  Frontier,  211-224,  and  324-339;  Epochs,  IX,  122-130;  J.  P.  DAVIS, 
Union  Pacific  Railroad;  SPARKS,  Expansion,  366-375. 

2.  THE  ATLANTIC  CABLE.     FOSTER,  Century  of  Diplomacy,  403-404;  Epochs,  IX, 
70-82;  H.  M.  FIELD,  Story  of  the  Atlantic  Cable. 

3.  THE  CATTLE  RANCH.     E.  HOUGH,  Story  of  the  Cowboy;  T.  CARSON,  Ranching, 
Sport,  and  Travel,  42-225;  J.  G.  McCov,  Historic  Sketches  of  the  Cattle  Trade;  W. 
SHEPARD,  Prairie  Experiences. 

4.  BUFFALOES.  W.  T.  HORNADAY,  Extermination  of  American  Bison,  Report  of 
Smithsonian  Institution,  1887,  II,  367-548;  HULBERT,  Historic  Highways,  I,   101- 
127;  THWAITES,  ED.,  Early  Western  Travels,  XXXI,  Index,  under  Bison. 

f 

SUGGESTIVE   QUESTIONS 

In  what  sense  is  it  true  to  say  that  the  Civil  War  introduced  a  new  era?  Summarize 
the  political  and  economic  results  of  the  war.  Was  the  consolidation  of  capital  wholly 
good  or  wholly  bad?  Did  labor  in  the  North  gain  or  lose  by  the  war?  Why  did  the 
wwr  bring  corruption  in  politics?  Why  was  it  good  statesmanship  to  foster  the 
growth  of  the  West  during  the  war?  Did  this  policy  not  mean  a  drain  of  men  away 
from  the  army?  Why  did  labor-saving  machinery  come  into  wider  use  during  the 
war?  Why  was  the  creation  of  the  large  cattle  ranches  delayed  till  the  close  of  the 
war?  What  was  the  Credit  Mobilier? 


CHAPTER    XXV 
POLITICAL   RECONSTRUCTION 

METHODS  OF  RECONSTRUCTION 

ANDREW  JOHNSON,  to  whom  the  presidency  fell  at  the  death  of  Abra 
ham  Lincoln,  had  received  the  vice-presidential  nomination  in  1864 
as  a  loyalist  of  Eastern  Tennessee,  which  class  Lincoln    Andrew 
felt  should  be  recognized.     He  had  had  more  experience    Johnson. 
in  public  affairs  than  had  Lincoln,  having  passed  through  various  town 
and  state  offices  to  the  governorship  of  Tennessee  and  membership 
successively  in  both  branches  of  Congress,  but  he  lacked  Lincoln's 
qualities  of  tact,  patience,  gentleness,  good  judgment,  and  ability  to 
get  along  with  men.     He  quarreled  almost  continuously  with  Congress 
and  with  his  party  throughout  his  administration. 

The  year  1865  was  one  of  high  tension  in  the  public  mind.  The 
surrender  of  Lee  and  the  end  of  the  war,  followed  by  the  assassination 
of  President  Lincoln,  the  pursuit,  capture,  trial,  and  The  exciting 
execution  of  the  conspirators,  keyed  the  nation  to  an  year  of  1865> 
extreme  pitch  of  excitement.  In  the  bitterness,  President  Davis, 
pursued  and  imprisoned,  was  charged  not  only  with  treason  but 
with  having  had  a  part  in  the  death  of  the  President  of  the  United 
States.  The  impressive  review  of  the  victorious  armies  at  Washington 
and  the  return  of  the  men  to  peaceful  pursuits;  the  sad  return  of  the 
southern  veterans  to  their  desolate  homes,  the  sensational  trial,  con 
viction,  and  execution  of  the  keeper  of  the  Confederate  prison  at 
Andersonville,  Georgia,  marked  the  end  of  military  hostilities,  while 
the  abolition  of  slavery  by  state  after  state  in  the  South,  the  formal 
repeal  of  the  once  proud  ordinances  of  secession  by  the  same  states, 
the  repudiation  of  their  Confederate  debts  and  their  knocking  at  the 
doors  of  Congress  in  Washington  for  readmission  to  the  Union,  inau 
gurated  a  political  readjustment  that  promised  at  first  to  be  speedy. 
Ex-members  of  the  Confederate  Congress,  ex-generals  from  the  Con 
federate  army,  and  even  ex- Vice  President  Stephens  sought  member 
ship  in  the  Congress  of  the  United  States.  The  prospect  of  completing 
the  restoration  of  the  Union  so  quickly  and  so  peacefully  at  the  end 
of  the  year  of  excitement  at  first  aroused  great  popular  enthusiasm. 

411 


412  AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 

The  work  of  bringing  the  Southern  States  back  into  the  Union  was 
called  Reconstruction.     How  it  was  to  be  done  and  under  what  terms 

were  topics  of  discussion  in  the  North  as  soon  as  seces- 
dentiai  plan  sion  became  an  accomplished  fact,  and  during  the  four 
of  Recon-  years  of  war  the  discussion  continued.  Unfortunately  the 

Constitution  was  silent  on  the  subject.  Quite  naturally 
the  makers  of  the  Constitution  did  not  recognize  in  that  document 
the  possibility  of  the  destruction  of  the  Union  which  they  sought  to 
cement,  and  made  no  provisions  for  the  reunion  of  estranged  sections. 
President  Lincoln  worked  out  a  plan,  which  in  general  President 
Johnson  adopted  as  his  own,  by  which  any  Southern  State,  with  the 
concurrence  of  at  least  ten  per  cent  of  the  voters  in  that  state  in 
1860,  was  to  be  allowed  to  form  a  new  state  government  and  to  elect 
members  to  Congress,  upon  its  formal  recognition  of  the  abolition 
of  slavery.  During  the  lifetime  of  Lincoln,  Tennessee,  Arkansas, 
and  Louisiana  were  so  organized,  and  it  was  under  the  Lincoln- 
Johnson  plan  that  the  remainder  of  the  Southern  States  were  acting 
in  1865. 

The  one  thing  that  remained  to  complete  the  restoration,  was  the 
formal  assent  of  Congress  itself  to  receive  the  representatives  of  the 

restored     states    into     its    membership.     This    consent 

Congress  refused  to  give  until  the  Southerners,  in  addi- 
accept  the  tion  to  freeing  the  blacks,  should  go  further  and  pass 
plan?  6  laws  to  guide  and  protect  the  ex-slaves  in  their  newly 

acquired  freedom.  Here  Congress  and  the  President 
parted  ways.  The  President  insisted  that  the  states  should  be  let 
alone  in  their  dealings  with  the  freedmen,  while  Congress  favored  na 
tional  supervision  of  the  matter.  The  Southern  States  made  the 
terrible  mistake  of  antagonizing  the  branch  of  the  national  government 
that  had  the  last  word  on  the  question  of  their  readmission  into  the 
Union.  In  the  face  of  the  wishes  of  Congress,  state  after  state  in  the 
South  not  only  refused  to  give  the  blacks  any  practical  assistance,  but 
passed  new  "black  codes"  denying  them  many  of  the  privileges  of 
freedom.  Included  in  these  codes  were  vagrancy  laws,  which  reduced 
the  negroes,  who  had  no  fixed  place  of  abode  and  no  regular  work,  to 
forced  service  for  the  whites  who  came  forward  and  paid  their  fines. 
This  was  practically  a  restoration  of  slavery.  Congress  feared  that  if 
it  did  not  intervene  to  check  the  reckless  Southern  legislation  under 
the  President's  mild  policy,  the  emancipation  of  the  slaves,  accom 
plished  at  the  cost  of  the  war,  would  be  practically  brought  to  nought. 
The  members  of  Congress,  too,  were  jealous  of  the  President  because 
he  had  taken  up  the  problem  of  Reconstruction  without  consulting 


POLITICAL  RECONSTRUCTION  413 

them,  and  many  allowed  their  personal  antagonism  to  the  President 
to  set  them  in  opposition  to  his  measures. 

The  Senate  and  the  House  of  Representatives,  therefore,  before 
consenting  to  the  admission  of  Southern  members  to  Congress,  passed 

two  national  laws  to  give  to  the  negroes  such  protection 

0  ,    ,V  ,  The  congres- 

as   seemed   to   Congress   necessary.     One   of   these   laws    sionai  plan 

enlarged  the  scope  of  the  Freedmen's  Bureau,  a  national  °*  Re<r°n- 
charity  in  the  interests  of  the  blacks,  and  the  other 
guaranteed  to  the  unfortunates  the  civil  rights  denied  them  by  the 
Southern  States.  The  President,  who  did  not  weaken  in  his  position 
that  these  matters  were  not  properly  within  the  power  of  the  national 
government,  vetoed  both  bills;  and  the  exasperated  Congress  passed 
them  over  his  veto.  Congress  then  went  further  and  put  its  ideas  as 
to  the  civil  rights  of  the  negro  into  the  more  permanent  form  of  the 
fourteenth  amendment  to  the  Constitution,  in  effect  1868,  which  dealt 
a  final  blow  to  the  principles  of  the  Dred  Scott  Decision  by  the 
declaration  that  all  persons  born  in  the  United  States,  and  subject 
to  its  jurisdiction,  were  citizens  of  the  United  States;  and  that  no 
state  should  abridge  the  privileges  of  citizens  nor  deprive  any  person 
of  life,  liberty  or  property  without  due  process  of  law,  nor  deny  him 
the  equal  protection  of  the  law.  Tennessee  alone  accepted  the 
amendment  and  was  at  once  admitted  back  into  the  Union;  the  other 
Southern  States  refused.  Angered  again  by  the  refusal,  and  encouraged 
by  the  support  of  the  people  who  by  this  time  had  turned  from  Presi 
dent  Johnson  and  had  registered  their  approval  of  the  congressional 
plan  of  Reconstruction  in  the  congressional  elections  of  1866,  Congress 
imposed  still  harder  terms.  It  set  aside  the  Johnson  state  governments 
and  enacted  that  the  refractory  states  be  divided  into  five  military 
districts,  each  to  be  under  the  command  of  an  officer  of  the  army. 
The  congressional  leaders,  Senator  Charles  Sumner  of  Massachu 
setts  and  Representative  Thaddeus  Stevens  of  Pennsylvania,  were 
able  men,  who  had  rendered  their  country  distinguished  The  suffer_ 
services,  but  in  this  crisis  they  proved  visionary  and  ing  of  the 
impractical,  and  believed  themselves  justified  in  dis-  South- 
regarding  actual  conditions  in  the  Southern  States.  In  the  first 
place,  the  whole  South  was  suffering  from  abject  poverty.  Every 
dollar  of  the  paper  money  of  the  Confederacy  and  every  Confederate 
bond  were  worthless;  every  loan  to  the  Confederate  government 
was  a  total  loss;  and  the  thousands  who  had  their  money  invested 
in  slaves  were  ruined.  Millions  of  dollars'  worth  of  Southern  prop 
erty  had  been  destroyed  by  the  contending  armies,  and  in  some 
cases  whole  towns  and  cities  had  been  laid  in  ashes.  Many  of  the 


414  AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 

slaveholders,  who  had  never  worked  with  their  hands,  found  themselves 
reduced  to  the  necessity  of  working  for  their  daily  bread.  "  General 
Sherman  shall  not  bring  my  daughters  to  the  wash  tub,"  declared 
one  proud  Southerner,  typical  of  his  class,  and  the  efforts  he  made 
to  keep  his  vow  were  pathetic.  He  tried  to  chop  wood  and  to  use  the 
hoe,  but  with  the  weight  of  his  years  he  proved  almost  as  helpless  as 
a  babe.  Yet  he  struggled  on,  as  did  many  another  unused  to  manual 
labor,  for  only  their  own  hands  kept  them  from  starvation.  In  some 
instances  the  blacks  in  their  freedom  remained  loyal  to  their  old 
masters,  and  cheerfully  performed  their  accustomed  tasks. 

There  was  infinite  humiliation  to  the  whites  in  the  fact  that  the 
soldiers  used  by  the  United  States  to  carry  out  the  military  government 
Harsh  of  the  recalcitrant  states  were  largely  ex-slaves.  Clad 

regulations.  m  tjle  uniform  of  the  United  States  and  armed  with 
muskets  or  swords,  the  former  slaves  would  strut  down  the  streets 
of  the  little  town  near  the  old  home  of  plantation  days,  and  the 
old  master,  meeting  them,  must  get  out  of  the  way.  The  Southern 
veterans  were  not  allowed  to  meet  in  reunion  to  talk  over  their  war 
experiences  and  to  sing  the  war  songs.  If  they  wore  the  old  uni 
forms  with  the  Confederate  buttons,  the  soldiers  might  throw  them 
to  the  ground  and  snatch  the  buttons  from  them.  All  these  indig 
nities  and  more  were  heaped  on  the  Southerners,  when  their  situation 
was  unfortunate  enough  at  best. 

In  order  to  shake  off  this  military  government  and  get  back  into  the 
Union,  the  Southern  States  were  obliged  to  comply  with  the  harsh  con 
ditions  set  by  Congress  in  the   Reconstruction   Act   of 
The  triumph       ,  ,        ,  ^.,     . 

of  the  con-        March    2,    1867.       Their  new  constitutions  were   to   be 

framed  by  conventions  of  delegates  elected  by  whites 
and  blacks  alike,  except  that  those  whites  disfranchised  for 
participation  in  the  war  could  not  take  part;  each  of  the  new  constitu 
tions  was  to  contain  a  clause  giving  the  elective  franchise  to  blacks  and 
whites  on  the  same  terms;  and  the  fourteenth  amendment  must  be 
accepted.  Bitter  conditions  indeed;  but  seven  of  the  Southern  States 
soon  complied,  were  admitted  at  once  back  into  the  Union,  and  with 
Tennessee  took  part  in  the  presidential  election  of  1868.  Early  in  the 
next  administration  the  fifteenth  amendment  to  the  Constitution  was 
passed,  providing  that  the  right  to  vote  should  be  denied  to  no  citizens 
of  the  United  States  on  account  of  race,  color,  or  previous  condition 
of  servitude.  The  last  three  states  accepted  the  conditions  of  the 
Reconstruction  Act,  ratified  the  fifteenth  amendment,  and  were 
restored  to  their  position  in  the  Union  in  time  to  take  part  in  the 
presidential  election  of  1872.  The  negroes  were  now  in  possession  of 


POLITICAL  RECONSTRUCTION  415 

full  civil  and  political  rights,  and  all  the  Southern  States  were  restored 
to  their  old  place  in  the  Union. 

Such  bitter  feeling  developed  between  the  President  and  Congress 
over  the  question  of  Reconstruction  that  the  House  of  Representatives 
in  1868,  on  the  eve  of  the  presidential  campaign  of  that  . 
year,  impeached  President  Johnson  before  the  bar  of  the  mentof 
Senate  for  his  alleged  refusal  to  obey  the  recently  enacted  j^son* 
Tenure  of  Office  Act  and  for  other  reasons.  The  Tenure  of 
Office  Act  provided  that  the  President,  who  made  appointments  with 
the  consent  of  the  Senate,  might  remove  his  appointees  from  office 
only  with  the  consent  of  the  same  body.  In  spite  of  the  act  the 
President  had  removed  Secretary  Edwin  M.  Stanton  from  the  War 
Department.  A  two-thirds  vote  of  the  Senators  against  the  President 
would  have  removed  him  from  office,  but  he  escaped  conviction  by 
one  vote.  Posterity  may  rejoice  that  the  presidency  was  not  degraded, 
yet  many  who  believe  that  Johnson's  plan  of  reconstruction  was 
wiser  than  that  of  Congress,  still  hold  him  responsible  for  his  trouble 
with  that  body,  because  in  his  quarrel  with  it  he  assumed  that  he  was 
wholly  in  the  right  and  refused  to  yield  an  inch.  He  was  an  obstinate 
man,  unable  either  to  bring  men  to  his  point  of  view  or  to  accept  theirs. 
Although  President  for  almost  four  years,  he  was  practically  without 
power  in  legislation  all  that  time,  for  there  was  a  two-thirds  majority 
opposed  to  him  in  both  houses  of  Congress,  ready  on  every  occasion 
to  override  his  veto. 

Since  the  memorable  day  at  Appomattox,  General  Grant,  as  the 
North's  greatest  military  chieftain   and   most  popular  citizen,   had 

loomed  large  as  a  possible  presidential  candidate,  and  the 

.  ,  .  .  The  presi- 

Republicans    quite    naturally    gave    him    a    unanimous    dential  nomi- 

nomination  in  1868  on  a  platform  indorsing  the  congres-  J|g^ns  of 
sional  plan  of  Reconstruction.  The  Democrats,  who 
were  still  suffering  from  the  odium  of  having  declared  the  war  a  failure 
in  1864,  were  in  a  difficult  position.  To  restore  the  prestige  of  the 
party,  the  character  and  record  of  their  new  leader  was  of  the  utmost 
importance.  There  were  three  paths  open  to  them.  First,  they 
might  name  a  popular  military  hero  from  the  ranks  of  their  own  party, 
like  General  Winfield  Scott  Hancock,  or  General  Francis  P.  Blair,  who 
would  appeal  to  the  war  spirit.  Second,  they  might  pick  a  prominent 
man  from  the  triumphant  Republican  party,  like  Chief  Justice  Salmon 
P.  Chase  or  President  Andrew  Johnson,  who  would  be  willing  to  desert 
his  own  party  and  lead  them;  or  third,  they  might  nominate  one  of 
their  own  number,  who  had  stood  loyal  to  principle  during  the  late 
war  as  a  Peace  Democrat.  The  last  course  was  the  most  consistent 


416  AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 

with  the  Democratic  record,  but  in  view  of  the  success  of  the  war  it  was 
poor  politics.  Chase,  who  had  been  Lincoln's  Secretary  of  the  Treas 
ury  till  the  middle  of  the  year  1864  and  was  now  Chief  Justice  of  the 
Supreme  Court,  was  very  anxious  for  the  Democratic  nomination, 
though  he  was  criticized  for  lowering  the  dignity  of  the  Supreme 
Bench  by  seeking  political  preferment.  President  Johnson,  smarting 
under  the  humiliation  of  his  quarrel  with  the  Republican  congressional 
leaders,  looked  to  the  Democrats  as  his  only  hope  of  vindication. 

Consistency  triumphed  over  politics,  and  the  Democratic  nomina 
tion,  on  a  platform  calling  for  the  "immediate  restoration  of  all  the 
The  result  at  states,"  was  given  to  Horatio  Seymour  of  New  York,  a 
the  polls.  peace  man  and  governor  of  New  York  during  the  war.  In 
the  electoral  colleges  the  vote  stood  214  for  Grant  to  80  for  Seymour. 
The  Peace  Democrat,  as  a  vote  getter,  was  no  match  for  the  nation's 
most  popular  military  hero.  The  incubus  of  the  war  hung  over 
the  Democrats  for  years,  and  it  is  interesting  in  this  connection 
to  note  their  later  record,  that  they  were  worsted  at  the  polls 
in  1872  when  they  tried  a  member  of  the  Republican  party  as 
their  leader,  in  1876  when  they  were  led  by  another  Peace  Demo 
crat,  and  in  1880  with  a  military  hero  as  their  candidate.  Not  till 
1884,  when  sectional  bitterness  had  subsided  and  they  were  led  by  one 
who  had  taken  no  active  part  in  the  war  or  war  politics,  did  they  suc 
ceed  in  electing  their  candidate. 

THE   WORKING   OF   THE    NEGRO    STATE    GOVERNMENTS 
IN    THE    SOUTH 

Because  of  natural  modesty  and  reticence,  General  Grant  shrank 
from  the  public  gaze  and  from  speech-making;  of  the  arts  of  the 
President  politician  he  had  none,  and  he  was  a  poor  judge  of  men. 
Grant.  jjis  knowledge  of  the  law  and  government  of  the  United 

States  was  meager,  so  that  he  was  compelled  to  lean  heavily 
upon  friends  and  advisers,  some  of  whom  deceived  him  shamefully. 
The  people,  however,  never  forgot  that,  with  Lincoln,  Grant  had 
been  th^  savior  of  the  Union,  and  they  forgave  him  his  political 
deficiencies. 

The  most  prominent  topic  before  the  people  during  these  years  was 
the  actual  working  of  the  new  state  governments  of  the  South  in  the 
Experiences  hands  of  the  negroes  and  their  unprincipled  white  leaders, 
of  South  The  experience  of  South  Carolina  may  be  taken  as  illus 

trative  of  the  working  of  the  system.  In  the  legislature 
of  this  state,  1868-1872,  only  twenty-two  of  the  one  hundred  and  fifty- 
£ve  members  could  read  and  write;  several  could  only  .write  their 


POLITICAL  RECONSTRUCTION 


417 


names,  and  forty-one  signed  their  names  with  a  cross  mark.  One  of  the 
ninety-eight  negro  members  paid  $83  in  taxes,  thirty  together  paid 
$60,  and  sixty-seven  paid  none;  of  the  fifty-seven  white  members 
twenty-four  paid  no  taxes.  The  only  executive  official  of  the  state 
to  pay  taxes  was  the  lieutenant  governor.  Yet  these  poverty  stricken 
ignoramuses  in  one  year  levied  $2,000,000  in  taxes  on  the  taxpayers 
of  the  state,  most  of  whom  were  whites,  and  in  four  years  ran  the 
state  $20,000,000  in  debt. 


A  TRIAL  BY  THE  Ku  KLUX  KLAN 

The  leaders  of  the  blacks  were  in  large  part  white  men,  either  "car 
pet-baggers"  from  the  North,  that  is,  adventurers  who  had  packed 
all  their  belongings  in  a  carpet-bag  and  had  gone  South    Tfae  ^  ^_ 
to  seek  their  fortunes  in  corrupt  politics,  or  "scalawags,"    bagers  and 
that  is,  Southern  whites,  who  from  low  motives  so  far 
betrayed    their   friends   and    neighbors    as    to    help    the 
negroes  administer  their  criminal  rule. 

The  self-respecting  Southerners,  before  Congress  would  allow  them 
to  vote,  found  two  ways  of  fighting  against  their  oppression.     First, 
they  formed  secret  societies  to  intimidate  the  black  voters    The  Ku 
and  frighten  them  away  from  the  polls.     The  members    KluxKlan. 
of  the  most  notable  of  these  societies,  the  Ku  Klux  Klan,  would  ride 


4i8  AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 

about  among  the  negro  huts  at  night,  attired  in  fantastic  costumes,  to 
frighten  the  occupants  and  bind  them  by  solemn  oath  to  do  the  bidding 
of  the  whites.  They  resorted  not  only  to  actual  violence  but  also  to 
grotesque  devices.  Drawing  up  before  one  hut  and  requesting  a  drink 
of  water,  a  horseman,  who  carried  a  tank  concealed  beneath  his  robes, 
would  drink  three  bucketfuls  of  water,  with  the  words,  "  That's  good; 
the  first  I've  had  since  Shiloh."  Another  would  ask  a  frightened 
negro  to  hold  his  horse,  and  then  taking  off  what  was  apparently  his 
own  head  would  bid  the  black  hold  that  too.  It  was  easy  to  frighten 
the  superstitious  ex-slaves.  In  1870  and  in  1871  by  "Force  Acts"  Con 
gress  adopted  extreme  measures  against  such  methods  and  the  Ku  Klux 
Klan  was  broken  up. 

Furthermore,  the  disfranchised  whites,  through  their  Northern 
friends,  carried  on  a  persistent  agitation  in  Congress  in  favor  of  giving 
Congres-  them  back  the  suffrage.  Congress,  as  we  have  seen, 
sionai  agita-  yielded  but  slowly,  and  lent  its  favor  rather  to  the  negroes 
ofTh?  f!  than  to  their  old  masters.  It  was  not  till  1872  that  a  law 

Southern          was  passed  by  Congress  wholly  removing  from  the  South 
ern  whites  the  political  disabilities  resulting  from  the  war. 
From  that  time  the  "  carpet-bagger,"  the  "  scalawag,"  and  the  negro 
gradually  lost  their  political  domination. 

In  the  presidential  campaign  of  1872  opposition  to  General  Grant 
broke  out  in  the  ranks  of  his  own  party  and  culminated  in  the  forma 
tion  of  the  Liberal  Republican  Party  with  Horace  Greeley, 
dential  editor  of  the  New  York  Tribune,  as  its  candidate.     The 

ofTs72Sn  Republicans  renominated  Grant,  and  the  Democrats 
joined  with  the  bolting  Liberal  Republicans  in  support 
of  Greeley.  The  followers  of  Greeley,  among  them  such  distinguished 
men  as  ex-Secretary  Seward,  Chief  Justice  Salmon  P.  Chase,  ex-minis 
ter  to  England  Charles  Francis  Adams  and  United  States  Senator 
Charles  Sumner,  denounced  corruption  in  public  life  and  stood  for 
a  more  liberal  treatment  of  the  Southerners  and  for  a  single  term 
for  the  President.  The  rank  and  file  of  the  nation,  however, 
filled  with  the  spirit  of  the  common  soldiers  of  the  late  war,  refused 
to  rally  behind  a  candidate,  no  matter  how  distinguished,  who,  like 
Greeley,  had  signed  the  bail-bond  of  Jefferson  Davis,  but  cast  their 
ballots  in  overwhelming  numbers  for  their  beloved  general,  who  was 
triumphantly  reflected  by  a  vote  of  286  to  63  in  the  electoral  colleges. 
The  Prohibition  party  made  its  first  appearance  in  this  campaign, 
demanding  the  prohibition  of  the  manufacture  and  sale  of  intoxicating 
liquors  and  the  extension  of  suffrage  to  women,  but  it  polled  less  than 
6,000  votes.  The  party  of  the  Labor  Reformers,  the  first  modern 


POLITICAL  RECONSTRUCTION  419 

attempt  of  labor  to  enter  politics,  polled  a  small  vote,  Wendell  Phillips 
of  Massachusetts,  former  abolition  leader,  being  an  ardent  champion 
of  the  new  party. 

THE  END  OF  RECONSTRUCTION 

After  the  panic  of  1873  had  filled  the  country  with  an  army  of 
distressed,  who,  as  is  usual  after  great  financial  panics,  laid  the  blame 
for  their  woes  on  the  national  administration,  and  after  the 
corruption  in  public  life  had  assumed  the  proportions  of 
a  national  scandal,  a  victory  for  the  opposing  Democratic  presidential 


party  in  the  presidential  contest  of  1876  seemed  highly  aign  ( 


probable.  The  Democratic  "tidal  wave"  in  the  con 
gressional  elections  of  1874  increased  the  hopes  of  that  party.  The 
Democrats,  encouraged,  put  forward  their  strongest  leader,  Samuel 
J.  Tilden,  governor  of  New  York.  As  a  lawyer  of  great  ability  Tilden 
had  risen  to  the  governorship  by  his  activities  in  connection  with  the 
overthrow  of  the  Tweed  ring;  and  as  governor  he  had  brought  himself 
into  national  prominence  by  his  brilliant  administration  of  state 
affairs.  The  demand  of  the  Democrats  was  for  reform.  Their 
platform  was  a  scathing  arraignment  of  the  party  in  power.  After 
detailing  the  various  charges  of  party  and  individual  wrongdoing 
currently  brought  against  the  Republicans,  it  concluded:  "The  demon 
stration  is  complete,  that  the  first  step  in  reform  must  be  the  people's 
choice  of  honest  men  from  another  party,  lest  the  disease  of  one  political 
organization  infect  the  body  politic,  and  lest  by  making  no  change  of 
men  or  parties  we  get  no  change  of  measures  and  no  real  reform." 

James  G.  Elaine  of  Maine,  former  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Repre 
sentatives  and  then  United  States  Senator,  devised  an  effective  weapon 

for  the  Republicans  to  use  in  parrying  these  thrusts.     In 

,  ~  i        i   f-i  The  Repub- 

eloquent  speeches  in  Congress  ne  deliberately  set  about    Hcans  in  the 

to  revive  all  the  fiery  passions  of  war  time.  He  harked  £g5Jjpaign  of 
back  to  the  charge  that  Jefferson  Davis  was  responsible 
for  the  terrible  sufferings  of  the  Union  prisoners  at  Andersonville, 
Georgia,  during  the  war.  The  Southerners  replied  in  even  greater 
passion,  and  allowed  themselves  to  be  lured  farther  and  farther  along 
by  the  wily  Republican  leaders,  till  the  claim  could  be  made  that 
the  "old  rebel  war  spirit"  still  dominated  the  Democratic  party.  The 
ruse  was  wonderfully  effective,  the  way  was  prepared  for  another  presi 
dential  campaign  on  the  old  issues,  while  reform  dropped  more  or  less 
out  of  sight.  The  nomination  of  the  Republicans  did  not  fall  to 
Elaine,  who  was  the  leading  candidate,  but  to  a  dark  horse,  Ruther 
ford  B.  Hayes  of  Ohio,  who  was  serving  his  third  term  as  governor 


420  AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 

of  that  state.  The  Liberal  Republicans,  discouraged  by  their  poor 
showing  in  1872,  named  no  candidates. 

As  in  1872,  two  small  parties  again  placed  candidates  in  the  field, 
the  Prohibitionists  who  polled  9,500  votes,  and  the  Greenback  party. 
Two  small  The  party  of  the  Labor  Reformers  of  1872  was  extinct, 
parties.  but  its  followers  were  appealed  to  by  the  Greenbackers, 

who  united  farming  and  labor  interests  and  called  for  an  unlimited 
issue  by  the  government  of  the  greenback  currency  of  the  war 
times.  This  was  the  first  entrance  of  the  agricultural  interests  as 
such  into  politics.  Peter  Cooper,  the  Greenback  candidate,  polled 
82,000  votes,  mainly  in  the  West. 

When  the  returns  of  election  day  came  in,  no  one  could  tell  whether 
the  Democratic  or  Republican  electors  had  been  chosen  in  the  three 
states  of  South  Carolina,  Florida,  and  Louisiana,  while 
over  life  Ute  a  dispute  over  the  eligibility  of  an  elector  complicated  the 
election  and  result  in  Oregon.  A  majority  in  the  electoral  colleges  at 
settlement.  tms  time  was  ^S,  and  without  the  disputed  votes,  22  in 
all,  Tilden  had  1 84  to  1 63  for  Hayes.  One  more  vote  would 
elect  the  Democratic  candidate,  while  the  entire  22  were  necessary 
to  give  the  election  to  the  Republicans.  Both  parties  claimed  that  in 
each  of  the  three  contested  Southern  States  the  election  had  gone  in  favor 
of  its  own  electoral  ticket.  When  the  joint  session  of  the  two  houses 
of  Congress  met  formally  to  count  the  electoral  votes,  the  roll  of  the 
states  was  called  alphabetically  and  all  went  well  till  Florida  was 
reached.  There  were  two  reports  from  that  state.  Then  the  ques 
tion  had  to  be  met,  who  should  decide  whether  the  Democratic  or  th\ 
Republican  electors  had  been  chosen  in  Florida.  The  Constitution 
contained  no  explicit  direction  to  govern  the  situation.  It  provided, 
that  "The  President  of  the  Senate  shall,  in  the  presence  of  the  Senate 
and  the  House  of  Representatives,  open  all  the  certificates,  and  the 
votes  shall  then  be  counted."  The  point  of  difficulty  was,  who  should 
do  the  counting.  Did  this  function  belong  to  the  President  of  the 
Senate,  or  to  the  Senate,  or  to  the  House  of  Representatives,  or  to  both 
Houses  acting  together?  The  difficulty  was  increased  by  the  fact  that, 
while  the  Senate  was  Republican,  the  House  of  Representatives  was 
Democratic.  A  decision  by  Congress  itself,  with  partisanship  running 
high,  was  manifestly  impossible.  Accordingly  Congress  agreed  on  a 
special  law  for  the  immediate  situation,  which  provided  for  the  appoint 
ment  of  an  Electoral  Commission  of  five  Senators,  five  Representatives, 
and  five  members  of  the  Supreme  Court,  who  by  the  strictly  partisan 
vote  of  eight  to  seven,  decided  each  disputed  case  in  favor  of  the  Repub 
licans.  The  joint  session  of  Congress  duly  accepted  the  report  of  the 


POLITICAL  RECONSTRUCTION  421 

Electoral  Commission  and  gave  the  twenty-two  votes  to  Hayes,  who 
was  declared  elected  at  ten  minutes  past  four  o'clock  on  the  morning 
of  March  2,  two  days  before  inauguration,  by  an  electoral  vote  of  185 
to  184. 

The  tactics  employed  by  Andrew  Jackson  and  his  followers  against 
John  Quincy  Adams,  1825-1829,  were  now  repeated  by  the  Democrats 
against  President  Hayes.     The  new  President  was  called 
the  "Fraud  President,"   "President  de  facto,"  etc.     On    cratic  hostii- 
the  day  of  his  inauguration  certain  Democratic  papers    j*y  to  Presi- 
came  out  in  mourning,  one  in  New  York  showing  a  picture 
of  the  President  with  the  word  "fraud"  marked  across  his  face;  the 
President  was  even  greeted  in  public  as  "Old  Eight  to  Seven,"  in  jeer 
ing  reference  to  the  vote  of  the  Electoral  Commission. 

The  validity  of  President  Hayes's  title  to  the  office  was  not 
left  undisputed  even  after  he  was  inaugurated.  A  committee  of  in 
vestigation,  appointed  by  the  House  of  Representatives,  investiga- 
uncovered  undoubted  electoral  frauds  on  the  part  of  the  tions  by 
Republicans  in  South  Carolina,  Florida,  and  Louisiana, 
which,  it  was  supposed,  would  destroy  the  prestige  of  President  Hayes 
and  his  party  and  lead  to  their  certain  defeat  in  1 880.  Driven  to  extrem 
ity,  the  Republicans  in  self-defense  turned  on  Tilden  and  the  Democrats 
by  publishing  in  the  New  York  Tribune  cipher  telegrams  sent  through 
the  Western  Union  Telegraph  Company  during  the  height  of  the 
late  campaign,  which  tended  to  show  Democratic  frauds  in  the  same 
states.  At  this  sudden  turn  of  the  investigation  Tilden  appeared 
personally  before  the  congressional  committee  and  effectively  dis 
proved  any  personal  share  in  the  fraudulent  practices;  but  the  Republi 
cans  had  gained  their  point,  suspicion  had  been  cast  upon  the  leader 
of  the  rival  party  in  retaliation  for  the  charges  against  their  own  can 
didate;  and  neither  party  could  make  political  capital  in  1880  out  of 
the  election  frauds  of  1876.  Although  each  party  undoubtedly  prac 
ticed  fraud  in  the  election  of  1876,  there  is  no  reason  to  believe  that* 
either  Hayes  or  Tilden  was  personally  implicated,  for  the  character 
of  each  was  above  reproach. 

One  of  the  first  acts  of  President  Hayes  was  to  withdraw  the  United 
States  troops  from  South  Carolina,  Florida,  and  Louisiana,  and  with 
the  departure  of  the  troops  the  negro  governments  were 
supplanted  by  the  rule  of  the  whites,  so  that  the  episode 
may  fitly  be  regarded  as  the  end  of  Reconstruction.     The    the  troops 
political  results  of  the  President's  act  were  disastrous  to    loSh?16 
himself,  for,  by  his  leniency  toward  t"he  Southerners,  he 
angered  the  "Stalwart"  faction  of  his  party,  which  desired  still  further 


422  AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 

punishment  of  the  South  and  dubbed  the  President  and  his  supporters, 
for  their  mild,  half-way  measures,  "Half-Breeds."  The  " Stalwarts" 
were  also  estranged  by  the  President's  appointment  of  Daniel  M.  Key 
of  Tennessee,  an  officer  of  the  Confederate  army,  as  Postmaster 
General.  The  country,  however,  was  outliving  the  issues  of  the  war. 
The  day  was  passing  when  politicians  could  manufacture  political 
capital  out  of  the  old  passions  of  North  and  South. 

FOREIGN  RELATIONS,    1865-1877 

The  foreign  questions  arising  between  1865  and  1877  were,  as  a  rule, 
direct  inheritances  from  the  Civil  War.  Successful  war  had  left  in 
Th  x  1  t^ie  N°rtn  a  feelmg  °f  triumph,  and  a  bold,  aggressive 
sionorthe  spirit  was  exhibited  in  the  dealings  of  the  United  States 
Mexico  fr°m  w^  otner  nations.  A  foreign  nation  could  no  longer 
safely  defy  the  United  States,  as  France  had  done  in 
Mexico  during  the  Civil  War.  When  General  Grant  freed  the 
hands  of  his  country  by  the  defeat  of  the  armies  of  the  Confed 
eracy,  the  United  States  ordered  fifty  thousand  troops  to  the  banks 
of  the  Rio  Grande  River  and  demanded  that  the  French  leave  the 
American  continent.  France  complied,  Maximilian  was  executed 
by  the  Mexicans,  and  the  Monroe  Doctrine  was  more  strongly  in 
trenched  than  ever.  To  secure  the  withdrawal  of  the  French  from  the 
continent  without  war  was  a  distinguished  diplomatic  triumph  for 
William  H.  Seward,  who  served  as  Secretary  of  State  from  the  begin 
ning  of  Lincoln's  administration  in  1861  to  the  end  of  Johnson's 
administration  in  1869. 

Expansion  of  territory,  which  from  1840  to  1860  had  always  pre 
cipitated  discussion  of  the  extension  of  slavery,  could  now  go  on  with- 
The  out  that  menace.  In  1867  by  the  purchase  of  Alaska 

purchase  of  from  Russia,  the  United  States  acquired  nearly  600,000 
square  miles  of  new  territory.  The  price  paid  was  $7,200,- 
ooo.  As  in  the  case  of  the  Louisiana  purchase,  numerous  objectors 
arose,  who  in  derision  termed  Alaska  "Walrussia,"  "Our  Great  Na 
tional  Ice-House,"  etc.;  but  Secretary  Seward,  to  whom  is  due  the 
credit  for  the  step,  was  not  to  be  swayed  from  his  course,  and  time 
has  proved  his  wisdom.  The  furs,  timber,  fish,  gold,  iron,  and  other 
products  of  Alaska  have  proved  to  be  worth  hundreds  of  millions  of 
dollars.  The  value  of  her  output  of  all  kinds  from  the  time  of  her 
acquisition  down  to  the  end  of  1911  reached  $429,000,000. 

President  Johnson  and  Secretary  Seward  made  every  effort,  though 
without  success,  to  induce  Congress  to  consent  to  the  purchase  of  the 
Danish  West  Indian  islands  of  St.  Thomas  and  St.  John.  Somewhat 


POLITICAL  RECONSTRUCTION  423 

later  President  Grant  also  failed  when  he  sought  to  lead  Congress  to 
annex  the  independent  island  republic  of  Santo  Domingo, 
which  had  won  its  freedom  from  France  soon  after  the 
separation   of   the   United   States    from    Great    Britain,    schemes  for 
When  the  natives  of  the   Samoan  Islands    in  the  South    annexation. 
Pacific  Ocean  offered  the  islands  to  the  United  States  in 
1877,  the  offer  was  refused.     The  wave  of  national  expansion  which 
followed  the  Northern  victory  over  Southern  arms  was  at  an  end,  and 
another  was  not  to  set  in  till  the  war  with  Spain  in  1898. 

For  her  part  in  assisting  the  Confederate  States  during  the  late 
war  through  fitting  out  the  Alabama  and  kindred  Southern  vessels, 
the  victorious  Union  called  Great  Britain  to  strict  ac-  The  treaty  of 
count.  After  prolonged  controversy  and  threats  on  either  Washington, 
side,  the  demands  of  the  United  States  were  submitted  by  a  treaty,  or 
direct  agreement  of  the  two  nations  concerned,  to  the  arbitration  of 
a  commission,  which  was  to  convene  in  Geneva,  Switzerland;  and 
both  Great  Britain  and  the  United  States  agreed  to  regard  the 
findings  of  the  arbitrators  "as  a  full,  perfect  and  final  settlement 
of  all  the  claims."  One  arbitrator  was  appointed  by  the  President 
of  the  United  States,  one  by  the  Queen  of  England,  and  one  each  by 
the  King  of  Italy,  the  President  of  Switzerland,  and  the  Emperor 
of  Brazil.  The  treaty  of  Washington,  1871,  which  provided  for  the 
arbitration,  was  a  diplomatic  victory  for  the  United  States,  for  in  the 
rules  contained  in  it  to  guide  the  arbitrators  in  their  deliberations, 
Great  Britain  practically  recognized  at  last  as  valid  international  law 
the  principles  of  Washington's  neutrality  proclamation.  Nations  in 
general  now  accept  these  principles. 

For  breaking  these  rules  Great  Britain  was  required  by  the  tri 
bunal  to  pay  to  the  United  States  $15,500,000  in  gold.     The  republic 
was  gratified  not  only  at  the  amount  of  the  award,  but 
also  at  the  fact  that  the  verdict  set  right  what  they  con-    award  on 
sidered  an  enormous  grievance,   while  friends  of  peace    ^e  Alabama 
the  world  over  welcomed  the  object  lesson  of  peaceful 
arbitration  as  a  means  of  settling  international  disputes. 

The  treaty  of  Washington  dealt  also  with  other  questions  at  issue 
between  the  two  governments,  such  as  fishery  rights  on  the  banks  of 
Newfoundland,  the  navigation  of  the  St.  Lawrence  and 
Lake  Michigan,  and  the  boundary  between  the  domains    in  the 

of  the  two  countries  in  the  far  Northwest,  which  had  been    £reat7.of . 

Washington, 
in  dispute  since  the  treaty  regarding  Oregon  in  1846.    The 

successful  conclusion  of  the  treaty  reflected  great  credit  on  Grant's 
Secretary  of  State,  Hamilton  Fish. 


424  AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 

Secretary  Fish  also  performed  the  service  of  bringing  to  an  end  a 
war  between  Spain  and  her  old  colonies,  Peru,  Chile,  and  Ecuador. 

"In  the  character  of  mediator,"  he  used  the  good  offices 
Successful  ..  ,  T,  .  ,  ~ 

mediation         of  the  United  States  to  bring  representatives  of  the  four 

America.  warring  powers  together  in  Washington,  where  they 

signed  an  armistice  which  they  agreed  not  to  break  with 
out  three  years'  notice  to  the  government  of  the  United  States.  In  the 
fifties  the  South  American  states  had  distrusted  their  sister  republic  of 
the  north  on  account  of  the  Mexican  War  and  the  Walker  filibustering 
expeditions  against  Central  America.  A  change  of  feeling  took  place 
during  the  Civil  War,  when  efforts  to  extend  slavery  southward  defi 
nitely  ceased,  and  a  sense  of  common  danger  following  the  French 
invasion  of  Mexico  began  to  draw  North  and  South  America  together. 
This  growing  sympathy  was  increased  by  Secretary  Fish's  happy 
mediation. 

After  the  decade  of  intermittent  excitement  in  the  fifties  over  Cuba, 
which  was  marked  by  filibustering  expeditions,  the  Black  Warrior 
More  trouble  &ft.&^,  and  the  Ostend  Manifesto,  relations  with  the 
with  Spain  Spanish  rulers  of  the  island  were  peaceful  for  a  few  years. 
In  1868,  however,  a  fierce  war  of  independence  broke  out 
on  the  island,  and  President  Grant  would  have  recognized  the  Cubans 
as  belligerents,  as  Spain  had  recognized  the  Confederates  who  rose 
against  the  United  States,  had  he  not  been  deterred  by  the  counsel  of 
Secretary  Fish.  SaiJ  the  Secretary:  "They  (the  Cubans)  have  no 
army,  no  courts,  do  not  occupy  a  single  town  or  hamlet,  to  say  nothing 
of  a  seaport."  In  fact,  they  met  few  of  the  conditions  required  by 
international  law  as  necessary  prior  conditions  to  a  recognition  of 
belligerency. 

In  spite  of  the  Secretary's  efforts  for  peace  the  country  became  in 
volved  in  difficulties  with  Spain  by  the  Virginius  affair,  and  for  a  few 
The  Virgin-  weeks  war  seemed  unavoidable.  The  Virginius,  which  was 
ius  affair.  a  vessei  owned  by  the  Cuban  insurgents  fraudulently  carry 
ing  the  American  flag,  was  captured  on  the  high  seas  by  the  Spaniards 
while  employed  in  aid  of  the  rebellion,  and  after  a  trial  in  a  Cuban  port, 
over  fifty  of  her  crew  were  summarily  executed.  Among  the  victims  were 
nine  American  and  sixteen  British  subjects.  Demands  for  reparation 
were  made  on  Spain,  which  finally  consented  to  restore  the  Virginius 
and  her  surviving  passengers  and  crew  to  the  United  States,  and  to 
salute  the  flag  of  the  United  States  unless  Spain  should  prove  that  the 
Virginius  had  no  right  to  fly  the  flag  of  the  United  States.  The 
Attorney  General  of  the  United  States  was  forced  at  last  to  admit  that 
the  vessel  was  not  rightfully  a  United  States  vessel,  and  the  Spanish 


POLITICAL  RECONSTRUCTION  425 

salute  to  the  American  flag  was  dispensed  with.  The  vessel  was 
delivered  up  to  the  United  States,  but  it  is  now  generally  admitted  that 
Spain  was  in  the  right  in  seizing  the  ship,  since  the  Virginius,  belonging 
to  unrecognized  insurgents,  was  a  pirate,  subject  to  universal  capture. 

GENERAL  REFERENCES 

C.  R.  WILLIAMS,  Rutherford  Birchard  Hayes;  J.  A.  WOODBURN,  Thaddeus  Stevens; 
M.  STOREY,  Charles  Sumner;  BEARD,  Contemporary  American  History;  J.  G.  ELAINE, 
Twenty  Years  of  Congress;  C.  F.  ADAMS,  Lee  at  Appomattox  and  Other  Papers,  1-255; 
E.  B.  ANDREWS,  Last  Quarter  Century;  C.  F.  ADAMS,  JR.,  and  H.  ADAMS,  Chapters  of 
Erie  and  Other  Essays:  HARDING,  Orations,  421-442,  and  467-488. 

SPECIAL  TOPICS 

1.  THE   IMPEACHMENT   OF   PRESIDENT  JOHNSON.     RHODES,    United  States,   VI, 
98-157;  D.  M.  DE\VITT,  Impeachment  and  Trial  of  Andrew  Johnson;  HILL,  Decisive 
Battles,  135-174;  Epochs,  IX,  82-98;  HARDING,  Orations,  443-466. 

2.  THE  PURCHASE  OF  ALASKA.     RHODES,  United  States,  VI,  211-214;  FOSTER, 
Century  of  Diplomacy,  404-410;  Contemporaries,  IV,  547-549;  Old  South  Leaflets,  VI, 
133;  Epochs,  IX,  98-105;  BRUCE,  Expansion,  166-186;  SPARKS,  Expansion,  429-438. 

3.  THE    DISPUTED    PRESIDENTIAL    ELECTION    OF    1876.       RHODES,    UNITED 
STATES,  VII,  227-291;  HILL,  Decisive  Battles,  212-239;  P.  L.  HA  WORTH,  The  Hayes- 
Tilden  Disputed  Election;  Epochs,  IX,  200-208;   E.  STANWOOD,  Presidency,  356-393; 
C.  R.  WILLIAMS,  Rutherford  B.  Hayes,  I,  441-540. 

4.  THE  SOUTH  IN  RECONSTRUCTION  TIMES.     W.  L.  FLEMING,  ED.,  Ku  Klux  Klan, 
also  Documentary  History  of  Reconstruction;  J.  W.  GARNER,  Reconstruction  in  Mis 
sissippi;   Why  the  Solid  South?     Various  writers;    Contemporaries,  IV,  445-458,  and 
478-500;  Epochs,  IX,  59-69,  and  188-195. 

ILLUSTRATIVE   MATERIAL 

A.  W.  TOURGEE,  Poors  Errand;  J.  C.  HARRIS,  Gabriel  Tolliver;  E.  C.  STEDMAN, 
Horace  Greeley;  L.  W.  BALDWIN,  Yankee  School  Teacher  in  Virginia. 

SUGGESTIVE  QUESTIONS 

What  were  the  mistakes  of  Andrew  Johnson?  Give  a  defense  of  Johnson.  Is  it 
fitting  for  the  Chief  Justice  of  the  Supreme  Court  to  seek  a  presidential  nomination? 
Name  the  soldiers  who  have  secured  a  presidential  nomination.  Why  do  the  politicians 
prefer  such  men  as  candidates?  Was  the  democratic  nomination  of  Seymour  in  1868 
politically  wise?  How  do  you  account  for  the  Liberal  Republican  movement?  Why 
is  the  South  "solid"  for  the  Democrats?  Look  up  in  a  recent  life  of  Hayes  what 
promises  the  friends  of  Hayes  made  to  the  Southerners  before  the  completion  of  the 
count  of  the  electoral  vote  in  1877,  and  then  draw  a  comparison  between  the  presi 
dential  contest  of  1824  and  that  of  1876.  Account  for  the  wave  of  territorial 
expansion  that  accompanied  and  followed  the  war.  Compare  this  with  £he  wave  of 
territorial  expansion  during  and  after  the  Mexican  War.  What  wrere  the  leading 
issues  in  current  politics  before  the  people  in  the  presidential  campaigns  of  1868, 
1872,  and  1876? 


CHAPTER   XXVI 
AGRARIAN  AND   INDUSTRIAL   UNREST 

INDUSTRIAL  AND   FINANCIAL  PROBLEMS  UNDER  PRESIDENT 

HAYES 

ALTHOUGH  organized  labor  had  made  a  poor  showing  in  the  arena  of 
national  politics  in  1872  and  1876,  its  struggle  against  capital  did  not 
Industrial  lack  aggressive  force.  Capital  and  labor  were  arrayed 
unrest.  against  one  another  as  never  before,  and  almost  every 

great  question  of  the  Hayes  administration  touched  upon  some  phase 
of  the  struggle.  Industrial  contests  on  a  large  scale  stirred  the  country, 
and  aroused  universal  apprehension  when  it  was  realized  that  the 
antagonisms  of  capital  and  labor,  instead  of  dying  out,  were  increasing 
in  bitterness. 

Labor  troubles  in  the  past  had  usually  arisen  in  times  of  prosperity, 
when  prices  were  rising  and  wages  were  not  keeping  pace  with  prices. 
Railroad  There  were  many  strikes  in  the  flourishing  times  of  Andrew 

Jackson  and  in  the  days  of  high  prices  during  the  Civil 
War.  In  1877  the  largest  strikes  in  the  history  of  the  country  to  that 
time  took  place  for  the  opposite  reason  that,  with  falling  prices,  employ 
ers  were  quite  ready  to  grade  wages  according  to  profits,  and  were 
reducing  wages  on  every  hand.  More  than  one  hundred  thousand 
employees  of  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railroad  and  other  railroads 
left  their  work  rather  than  submit.  In  the  crisis  soldiers  were  massed 
in  various  railroad  centers  for  the  protection  of  property,  and  severe 
clashes  took  place  between  them  and  the  strikers.  The  fiercest  strug 
gles  occurred  in  Pittsburg,  Pennsylvania,  where  blood  was  shed  pro 
fusely  and  millions  of  dollars'  worth  of  property  were  destroyed.  At 
the  request  of  the  governors  of  several  of  the  states,  the  President 
took  the  unpopular  step  of  sending  national  troops  into  the  dis 
turbed  districts  to  keep  order. 

The  82,000  votes  polled  by  the  Greenback  party  in  the  presidential 
election  of  1876  were  not  a  true  measure  of  the  discontent  of  the 
Agrarian  agrarian  classes  in  the  middle  and  the  late  seventies.  The 

discontent.  Grangers,  or  Patrons  of  Husbandry,  whose  membership 
reached  150,000  in  1875,  waged  ardent  warfare  in  behalf  of  the  agrarian 

426 


AGRARIAN  AND  INDUSTRIAL  UNREST  427 

interests.  They  were  particularly  roused  to  wrath  against  the  rail 
road  corporations  because  of  the  latter's  custom  of  "watering  their 
stock,"  that  is,  of  issuing  to  the  stockholders  extra  stock  which  did  not 
represent  actual  paid-up  value,  and  on  the  basis  of  this  paying  large 
dividends.  Freight  rates,  they  argued,  which  brought  in  revenue 
enough  to  pay  handsome  dividends  on  " watered"  stock,  were  too  high. 

The  Western  States  proceeded  against  the  offending  corporations 
through  their  state  legislatures,  Illinois  by  regulating  the  charges 
in  public  grain  elevators  and  Wisconsin  by  limiting  the  Thereguia- 
passenger  and  freight  rates  of  the  railroads.  The  control  tion  of  rail- 
of  business  corporations  to  this  extent  was  an  innovation 
in  state  legislation,  and  the  action  of  the  legislatures  was  brought 
before  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  by  the  complaining 
roads.  In  these  "Granger  Cases,"  as  they  were  called,  the  court 
ruled  that  private  property,  such  as  ferries,  wharves,  hackney  coaches, 
warehouses,  and  railroads,  "affected  with  a  public  interest,"  that  is 
"devoted  to  a  public  use,"  must  submit  to  be  controlled  by  the  public 
for  the  common  good,  even  to  the  extent  of  state  regulation  of  their 
rates.  In  answer  to  the  objection  that  the  state  legislatures  might 
prescribe  "unreasonable"  rates,  the  court  admitted  that  this  was 
possible,  but  took  the  position  that  the  remedy  for  such  unjust  legis 
lation  was  not  in  the  courts  but  in  the  state  legislatures.  "For  pro 
tection  against  abuses  by  legislatures,"  said  the  court,  "the  people 
must  resort  to  the  polls,  not  to  the  courts."  Within  less  than  twenty*- 
five  years  ihe  court  reversed  its  position  on  this  latter  point,  and  held 
that  it  did  have  the  power  to  review  the  economic  legislation  of  the 
states,  and,  if  necessary,  to  set  it  aside  if  unjust  rates  were  imposed. 
The  first  part  of  the  great  decision,  concerning  the  power  of  the  various 
states  to  regulate  the  railroad  rates,  still  stands,  though  it  was  some 
what  restricted  by  a  decision  of  the  court  in  the  next  decade. 

The  congressional  elections  of  1878  also  indicated  the  strength  of 
the  opposition  to  organized  capital  at  the  time.     The  defiant  Grangers 
were  exultant  because  of  their  victories  over  the  railroads    The  congres_ 
in  the  rate  cases,  and  in  the  industrial  centers  labor  had    sional  eiec- 
not  laid  aside   the  asperities  and   hard   feelings  of   the 
strikes  and  riots  of  1877.     Organized  labor  and  organized  agricultural 
interests,  under  these  conditions,  combined  to  strengthen  the  Green 
back  party  on  the  common  ground  of  hatred  for  conservative  organized 
capital,  and  that  party  polled  over  1,000,000  votes.     The, older  parties 
were  frightened  at  the  waxing  strength  of  the  new  movement. 

From  the  beginning  of  the  year  1862  to  January  i,  1879,  there  was 
no  gold  or  silver  money  in  circulation.     The  people  were  using  paper 


428  AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 

money  entirely,  both  the  well-secured  national  bank  notes  and  the 
The  greenbacks.     The  value  of  both  kinds  of  notes  rose  and 

greenback  fell  with  the  confidence  of  the  people  in  the  ability  of 
the  government  to  redeem  its  promises  in  gold,  and  this 
fluctuation  in  value  was  made  apparent  to  the  general  public  in  the  rise 
and  fall  of  prices.  The  constant  shifting  of  values  was  acceptable  to 
the  speculators,  and  also  to  the  debtor  classes,  who  were  glad  to  seize 
the  opportunity  to  pay  off  their  debts  in  cheap  money.  These  advan 
tages  to  certain  classes  had  helped  to  bring  into  existence  the  Green 
back  party,  with  its  platform  in  favor  of  making  the  greenbacks  the 
permanent  currency  of  the  country  and  issuing  them  in  unlimited 
amounts.  Backed  by  conservative  business  interests,  Congress 
successfully,  though  with  great  difficulty,  withstood  the  demand. 
Instead  of  issuing  more  greenbacks,  it  decided  to  reduce  the  amount 
of  those  already  in  circulation,  and  to  discourage  rather  than  encourage 
the  speculating  tendencies  of  the  people.  It  set  the  first  day  of  the 
year  1879  as  the  date  when  it  would  begin  to  redeem  the  greenbacks 
in  gold.  The  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  John  Sherman,  amassed  nearly 
$150,000,000  in  gold  in  the  vaults  of  the  treasury  in  preparation  for 
this  resumption  of  specie  payments,  which  so  impressed  the  people 
with  the  government's  financial  soundness  that  they  no  longer  cared 
for  the  redemption  of  the  notes.  The  paper  money  was  more 
convenient  to  carry  than  coin  for  the  purposes  of  ordinary  business 
transactions,  and  from  that  day  to  this  about  $350,000,000  worth  of 
greenbacks,  backed  by  a  gold  reserve  which  has  usually  stood  at 
about  $150,000,000,  have  circulated  as  money  on  a  par  with  gold  in 
every  section  of  the  country.  They  are  literally  as  good  as  gold. 

Whether  or  not  to  coin  silver  was  another  important  financial 
problem  of  the  day.  Up  to  1873  the  government  had  coined  mainly 
The  question  §°^  an<^  ^ut  h'ttle  silver,  inasmuch  as  the  mine-owners 
of  the  coin-  generally  found  it  more  profitable  to  dispose  of  their 
s  ver*  small  stock  of  silver  for  use  in  the  arts  than  to  bring  it 
to  the  mint  for  coinage.  Congress  in  1873  passed  a  law  for  the 
demonetization  of  silver,  that  is,  it  ceased  coining  silver  dollars  alto 
gether.  Almost  immediately  thereafter,  by  the  discovery  of  new 
mines,  the  supply  of  silver  suddenly  became  greater  than  the  demand 
for  it  in  the  arts,  and  the  price  of  silver  went  down.  In  their  mis 
fortune  the  mine-owners  turned  to  the  government  with  the  request 
that  Congress  begin  again  to  coin  silver  as  well  as  gold.  The  debtor 
classes  and  the  sufferers  from  the  panic  of  1873  welcomed  the  pro 
posal  as  another  means  of  increasing  the  volume  of  currency  and 
improving  their  own  condition. 


AGRARIAN  AND  INDUSTRIAL  UNREST  429 

It  was  proposed  that  all  silver  brought  to  the  mints  be  coined, 
as  before  1873,  upon  the  payment  of  a  small  fee  to  reimburse 
the  government  for  the  cost  of  the  operation,  and  that  The  Biand- 
a  double  standard  of  value,  silver  as  well  as  gold,  be  A^son  Act. 
maintained.  This  plan,  popularly  known  as  the  free  coinage  of 
silver,  was  an  inflationist  scheme  almost  as  radical  as  that  of  the 
Greenbackers.  When  the  supporters  of  free  silver  perceived  that 
the  upholders  of  gold  as  the  single  standard  of  value  were  strong 
enough  in  Congress  to  defeat  the  proposed  change,  they  agreed  to  a 
compromise  bill  which  was  passed  over  the  veto  of  President  Hayes, 
known  as  the  Bland-Allison  Act  of  1878.  This  provided  that  the 
government,  though  still  remaining  on  the  gold  basis,  should  purchase 
not  less  than  $2,000,000  nor  more  .than  $4,000,000  worth  of  silver 
every  month  for  coinage  into  silver  dollars.  The  compromise  law 
remained  on  the  statute  books  till  1890,  but  under  its  operations  the 
demand  for  free  silver,  far  from  being  satisfied,  went  on  increasing. 

It  was  natural  that  with  the  widespread  attention  given  to  industrial 
improvement  some  heed  should  be  paid  to  the  demand  for  the  intro 
duction  into  the  government  service  of  the  principles  of 
modern  business  efficiency.  From  the  days  of  Jackson 
the  political  offices  within  the  gift  of  the  government  had  ness-like  re- 
been  looked  upon  as  rewards  to  be  handed  round  to  party 
favorites  for  political  services  rendered.  Favoritism, 
corruption,  and  inefficiency  were  the  natural  accompaniments  of  the 
system.  One  of  the  first  suggestions  of  the  distribution  of  offices 
according  to  ability  without  regard  to  party  came  from  Senator  Charles 
Sumner  of  Massachusetts  during  the  Civil  War.  After  the  war, 
regularly  every  year  for  many  years,  Representative  Jenckes  .of  Rhode 
Island  introduced  a  bill  in  the  House  of  Representatives  embodying 
the  new  ideas.  President  Grant  in  1871,  with  the  faint  support  of  Con 
gress,  which  was  soon  withdrawn,  made  a  few  spasmodic  beginnings 
toward  reform;  but  little  of  permanence  was  accomplished. 

President  Hayes  heartily  supported  the  new  movement.  Within  a 
few  weeks  after  his  inauguration  he  startled  the  leaders  of  his  party  by 
an  order  that  no  government  official  should  take  active  . 

..  .     ,  ,  .       President 

part  in  a  political  campaign  nor  pay  assessments  on  his  Hayes's  sup- 
salary  for  political  purposes.  Suiting  his  action  to  his 
words,  he  removed  Chester  A.  Arthur  and  Alonzo  B. 
Cornell  from  their  offices  in  the  New  York  customhouse  for  refusing 
to  honor  his  order,  and  to  Arthur's  successor  he  wrote,  "Let  no  man 
be  put  out  because  he  is  a  friend  of  Mr.  Arthur,  and  no  one  put  in 
merely  because  he  is  our  friend.  The  good  of  the  service  should  be  the 


430  AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 

whole  end  in  view."  The  President  failed  in  his  efforts  to  induce 
Congress  to  come  to  his  point  of  view  and  enact  the  new  ideas  into  law, 
but  he  succeeded  in  arousing  public  sentiment.  Local  civil  service 
reform  leagues  sprang  up  in  various  sections,  and  the  National  Civil 
Service  Reform  League,  which  still  exists,  came  into  existence.  The 
professional  politicians  of  every  party,  who  realized  that  with  the 
accomplishment  of  the  desired  reform  their  " plums"  would  slip  away 
from  them,  bitterly  opposed  the  stand  of  the  President. 

THE  PRESIDENTIAL  ELECTION  OF   1880 

Hayes  administered  the  affairs  of  the  country  in  troubled  times. 
Every  great  issue  that  arose  in  his  term  of  office  called  forth  a  storm  of 
Hayes's  opposition.  The  election  contest  of  1876,  the  withdrawal 

difficult  ad-  of  troops  from  the  South,  the  antagonism  of  capital  and 
labor,  financial  reform,  and  the  reform  of  the  civil  service, 
all  tended  to  bring  unpopularity  upon  the  administration.  Moreover, 
the  enactment  of  any  important  legislation  in  the  last  two  years  of  the 
President's  term  was  blocked  by  the  Democratic  control  of  both  houses 
of  Congress.  President  Hayes  had  declared  at  the  beginning  of  his 
administration  that  he  would  not  be  a  candidate  for  reelection,  so  that 
he  was  definitely  out  of  the  race  for  the  presidency  in  1880. 

Without  doubt  the  real  leader  of  the  Republican  party  at  this  time 
was  not  President  Hayes  but  Senator  James  G.  Elaine.  Two  obstacles, 
Elaine  as  however,  stood  in  the  way  of  Elaine's  nomination  to  suc- 
the  possible  ceed  Hayes;  first,  a  suspicion  that  he  had  shared  in  the 
candidate^*  corruption  of  Grant's  administration,  and  second,  the 
the  Repubii-  implacable  opposition  of  his  fellow  Republican,  Senator 
.  Roscoe  Conkling  of  New  York.  Elaine  was  a  hail  fel 
low  well  met,  Conkling  dignified  and  self-conscious.  In  the  sixties, 
while  both  men  were  members  of  the  House  of  Representatives  and 
before  Elaine  had  been  elevated  to  the  speakership,  in  the  heat  of  an 
angry  personal  controversy  Elaine  had  ridiculed  Conkling  on  the  floor 
of  the  House,  accusing  him  of  a  "haughty  disdain,"  a  " grandiloquent 
swell,"  and  a  "majestic,  supereminent,  overpowering  turkey-gobbler 
strut."  The  offended  Conkling  never  forgave  the  words.  He  worked 
against  his  enemy  in  the  national  Republican  convention  of  1876  and 
on  every  other  occasion  that  presented  itself.  When  the  convention 
of  1880  was  at  hand,  a  portion  of  the  party,  with  Conkling  at  their  head, 
presented  as  their  candidate  ex-President  Grant,  who  had  just  returned 
from  a  trip  around  the  world  and  was  still  immensely  popular.  No 
President,  however,  not  even  Washington,  had  had  a  third  term,  so 
that  many  sincere  admirers  of  the  Soldier-President  now  turned  from 


AGRARIAN  AND  INDUSTRIAL  UNREST  431 

him  for  fear  of  encouraging  "Caesarism."  A  third  candidate  for  the 
Republican  nomination,  in  addition  to  Elaine  and  Grant,  was  Hayes's 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  John  Sherman  of  Ohio.  After  balloting 
thirty-five  times  the  Republican  convention  was  " stampeded"  on 
the  thirty-sixth  ballot  for  General  James  A.  Garfield  of  Ohio,  who  had 
made  the  nominating  speech  for  Sherman. 

The  Democrats  passed  over  Tilden  and  gave  their  nomination  to 
General  Winfield  Scott  Hancock,  one  of  the  heroes  of  the  northern 
army  at  Gettysburg;  the  Prohibitionists  named  General    The  other 
Neal  Dow,  father  of  the  prohibition  law  in  Maine,  the    nominations. 
first  of  its  kind  in  the  country,  and  the  Greenbackers  put  forward 
General  James  B.  Weaver.     Every  candidate  in  the  campaign  had 
been  a  general  in  the  Union  army. 

Privileged  for  the  first  time  since  1860  to  take  part  in  a  presidential 
contest  without  the  presence  of  federal  troops,  the  reconstructed 
Southern  States  carried  their  grievances  against  the  The  result 
Republican  party  to  the  polls  and  voted  solidly  with  the  at  the  polls- 
Democrats,  and  "solid"  for  that  party  they  have  been  ever  since 
with  few  exceptions.  The  same  passions  of  sectionalism  were  at 
work  in  the  North  for  the  Republicans,  and  Garfield  was  elected 
with  a  popular  vote  of  4,450,000  and  214  electoral  votes,  to  a 
popular  vote  of  4,400,000  and  155  electoral  votes  for  Hancock;  Weaver 
polled  a  popular  vote  of  300,000  with  no  electoral  votes,  and  Dow  a 
popular  vote  of  10,000. 

CIVIL  SERVICE  REFORM 

James  A.  Garfield  had  quitted  the  Union  army  as  a  major  general 
before  the  war  was  over  to  accept  a  seat  in  the  national  House  of  Rep 
resentatives,  where  he  served  without  a  break  for  eighteen    James  A. 
years.     While  a  member  of  the  House,  he  was  elected    Garfield' 
to  the  United  States  Senate  from  Ohio,  and  then  to  his  credentials  to 
membership  in  both  Houses  of  Congress  there  was  added  at  the  same 
time  the  title  to  the  chief  magistracy.     Garfield  had  been  a  useful 
though  not  a  brilliant  congressman,  and  by  his  election  to  the  presi 
dency  the  hope  was  raised  that  he  would  be  able  to  unite  the  warring 
Republican  factions  of  the  Stalwarts  and  the  Half-Breeds. 

'This  was  not  to  be.     Though  both  factions  temporarily  buried  the 
hatchet  during  the  campaign,  trouble  began  as  soon  as    Rg  ublican 
the  President  made  his  first  nominations  to  public  office,    quarrels  over 
Bitter  feeling  arose  in  the  Senate  when  the  President  ig- 
nored  the  hard  and  fast  custom,  known  as  "senatorial 
courtesy."     This  custom  demands    that    the   President,  in   making 


432  AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 

nominations  to  public  office  in  any  particular  state,  follow  the  recom 
mendations  of  the  Senators  from  that  state;  and  the  Senators  usually 
stand  together  to  coerce  the  executive  into  conforming  to  the  prac 
tice.  Garfield  had  already  angered  the  two  Senators  from  New  York, 
Roscoe  Conkling  and  Thomas  C.  Platt,  by  refusing  to  follow  their 
recommendations  as  to  the  formation  of  his  cabinet,  and  by  daring 
to  make  Conkling's  enemy,  James  G.  Elaine,  Secretary  of  State.  In  a 
further  unexpected  show  of  independence  the  President  sent  to  the 
Senate  the  nomination  of  one  Robertson  as  collector  of  customs  at  the 
port  of  New  York  without  first  consulting  the  two  Senators.  When, 
contrary  to  "  senatorial  courtesy/'  the  Senate  confirmed  the  nomination, 
Senators  Conkling  and  Platt  in  anger  resigned  their  seats  and  to  vin 
dicate  their  stand  sought  reelection  in  the  New  York  legislature.  In 
this  they  were  both  defeated.  Following  closely  after  these  events, 
came  the  exposure  of  frauds  in  the  letting  of  contracts  for  carrying  the 
mails  along  certain  routes,  called  " star  routes."  The  vigorous  prosecu 
tion  of  the  guilty  by  order  of  the  President  threw  the  spoilsmen  into 
consternation. 

On  July  2,  1 88 1,  as  he  was  walking  arm  in  arm  with  Secretary 
Elaine  in  the  depot  of  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  in  Washington,  the 
The  assassi-  President  was  shot  in  the  back  by  a  disappointed  office- 
nation  of  the  seeker  and  died  on  September  19.  The  assassin  called 
himself  a  "  Stalwart  of  the  Stalwarts,"  and  a  " lawyer, 
theologian,  and  a  politician/'  who  had  done  the  country  a  service  by 
opening  the  way  for  the  "Stalwart"  Vice  President,  Chester  A.  Arthur, 
to  succeed  to  power.  The  madman  was  given  a  fair  trial,  and  was 
convicted  and  hanged. 

The  death  of  the  President  turned  public  attention  to  the  spoils 
system  as  the  responsible  cause  of  the  tragedy.  To  the  s-urprise  and 
delight  of  the  friends  of  the  merit  system,  the  "Stalwart" 
Service  Re-  Arthur  in  the  presidential  chair  sided  with  them,  and  with 
f MLSSS*  n*s  executive  approval  the  Civil  Service  Reform  Act,  or 
the  Pendleton  Act,  introduced  in  the  Senate  by  George  H. 
Pendleton  of  Ohio,  was  enacted  into  law  in  1883.  After  swaying 
national  politics  for  over  half  a  century,  Andrew  Jackson's  principle 
that  "to  the  victor  belong  the  spoils"  had  received  its  first  official 
check,  and  to  the  credit  of  Congress  be  it  said  that  it  has  never  yet 
abandoned  the  general  principle  placed  on  the  statute  books  in  1883. 

By  the  new  law,  provision  was  made  for  competitive  examinations 
Provisions  of  for  entrance  into  the  various  branches  of  the  civil  ser- 
the  new  law.  vice,  and  for  appointment  to  office  according  to  the  rank 
ing  obtained  by  the  candidates  in  the  examinations.  Removals  from 


AGRARIAN  AND  INDUSTRIAL  UNREST  433 

office  were  still  possible,  but  incentive  to  make  them  for  political  rea 
sons  every  four  years  was  largely  taken  away  by  the  provision  of  the 
law  requiring  that  all  appointments  be  made,  not  from  the  ranks  of 
political  favorites,  but  from  the  list  of  those  standing  highest  in  the 
examinations.  The  new  rules  were  not  to  apply  to  all  the  offices  in 
the  national  administration  but  only  to  those  designated  by  the  Presi 
dent  or  by  Congress.  At  first  few  offices  were  placed  under  the  pro 
visions  of  the  law,  but  each  President  since  has  made  some  extension 
of  the  system.  The  death  of  a  President  was  a  high  price  to  pay  for 
the  reform,  but  few  laws  passed  in  the  last  half  century  have  accom 
plished  more  in  the  interests  of  good  government.  New  York  State 
enacted  a  law  in  1883  along  the  same  lines  as  the  national  law,  to 
govern  its  own  civil  service;  and  Massachusetts  and  a  few  other  states 
have  followed  her  example.  Various  cities  have  adopted  similar 
regulations. 

IMMIGRATION 

Organized  labor,  bent  on  keeping  down  the  supply  of  labor  in  order 
to  maintain  as  high  a  standard  of  wages  as  possible,  had  long  stood  con 
sistently  opposed  to  foreign  immigration,  but  only  after    Restriction 
the  labor  unions  had  become  a  powerful  factor  in  national    of  immigra- 
life  did  Congress  pay  attention  to  their  demands.     The 
first  law  of  the  United  States  for  the  restriction  of  immigration,  marking 
the  end  of  the  country's  traditional  policy  of  welcome  to  all  foreigners, 
was  passed  in  1882.     Previous  to  this  time  there  had  been  some  few 
restrictions  on  immigration  by  such  states  as  were  directly  affected; 
for  example  by  New  York,  which  had  excluded  certain  classes.     By 
the  national  law,  which  was  in  many  respects  a  copy  of  existing  state 
laws,  lunatics  and  convicts  were  excluded,  all  who  were  liable  to  be 
come  a  public  charge,  and,  by  an  act  of  1885,  all  contract  laborers,  that 
is.  all  laborers  coming  into  the  country  under  a  contract.    At  this  time 
most  of  the  immigrants  were  from  the  countries  of  Northern  Europe. 

The  presence  of  thousands  of  Chinese  laborers  on  the  Pacific  coast, 
attracted  by  the  prospects  of  work  in  the  gold  mines  and  in  the  con 
struction  of  railroads,  was  highly  objectionable  to  the  Chinese  im- 
labor  unions.  The  Asiatics  worked  for  low  wages,  lived  ™ig™ti°n- 
in  squalid  quarters  on  a  few  cents  a  day,  and  in  general  competed  with 
the  whites  on  terms  which  to  the  latter  were  intolerable.  Their  pres 
ence,  too,  threatened  to  create  another  race  problem,  which  might 
some  day  rival  in  difficulty  the  Negro  or  the  Indian  problem.  President 
Hayes  vetoed  a  bill  passed  in  his  administration  to  exclude  the  Chinese 
altogether,  as  contrary  to  the  existing  treaty  with  China;  but  before  he 
went  out  of  office  he  succeeded  in  making  a  new  treaty  with  China, 


434  AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 

which  gave  to  the  United  States  discretionary  power  to  " regulate, 
limit,  or  suspend"  but  not  to  "absolutely  prohibit"  the  coming  o:: 
Chinese  laborers  into  the  country.  Under  this  treaty,  in  the  adminis 
tration  of  Arthur,  Congress  passed  a  law  to  exclude  the  Chinese  f.oi 
twenty  years,  which  seemed  to  the  President  too  long  a  term,  and  he 
refused  his  approval.  A  compromise  bill,  fixing  the  term  of  exclusion 
at  ten  years,  was  then  passed  and  received  the  signature  of  the  Presi 
dent.  This  was  renewed  later  under  another  president,  and  the  ex 
clusion  is  still  in  force.  Though  the  law  seems  harsh,  every  nation 
undoubtedly  possesses  the  right  to  expel  from  its  shores  any  aliens 
whose  presence  may  be  considered  dangerous  to  its  interests,  and  like 
wise  to  refuse  admission  to  all  whom  it  may  consider  undesirable. 

THE  ELECTION  OF  A  DEMOCRATIC  PRESIDENT 

The  presidential  campaign  of  1884  was  almost  entirely  devoid  of 
great  issues,  but  abounded  in  personal  abuse  heaped  upon  the  two 
leading  candidates.  Although  Arthur  had  administered 
dentiaiTomi-  his  office  well,  the  popularity  of  Elaine,  the  real  leader 
°f  °^  ^e  Republican  party,  overtopped  him,  and  the  party 
nomination  went  to  the  "plumed  knight,"  as  Elaine 
was  called  in  the  Republican  convention  of  1876.  The  Democrats 
named  as  their  candidate  Governor  Grover  Cleveland  of  New  York, 
the  Greenbackers  General  Benjamin  Butler  of  Massachusetts,  and  the 
Prohibitionists  Governor  St.  John  of  Kansas.  Mrs.  Belva  A.  Lockwood 
was  the  candidate  of  a  small  Equal  Rights  party,  which  demanded 
woman's  suffrage. 

As  Secretary  of  State  during  the  short  term  of  President  Garfield, 
Elaine  had  greatly  enhanced  his  reputation  by  his  vigorous  and  confi 
dent,  though  not  always  successful,  conduct  of  the  foreign 
record  as  Sec-   affairs  of  the  nation.     Intervening  in  a  quarrel  between 
retary  of  Peru  and  Chile  in  South  America  to  soften  the  demands 

of  the  latter  power  upon  conquered  Peru,  he  had  made  it 
apparent  that  he  believed  that  the  United  States  possessed  the  right 
to  interfere  in  the  troubles  of  the  South  American  republics  with  one 
another.  He  had  attempted,  unsuccessfully,  to  induce  Congress  to 
arrange  reciprocity  treaties  with  certain  countries,  that  is,  agreements 
for  mutual  free  trade  in  specified  articles.  He  had  also  unsuccessfully 
endeavored  to  induce  Great  Britain  to  abrogate  the  Clayton-Bulwer 
treaty  of  1850,  so  that  the  United  States  might  independently  build  and 
own  a  Panama  or  Nicaragua  canal. 

As   soon  as   the   presidential   campaign    of   1884    began,   ill    luck 
seemed  to  dog  the  path  of  the  Republican  leader.     In  the  first  place; 


AGRARIAN  AND  INDUSTRIAL  UNREST  435 

the  old  suspicion  of  corruption  attaching  to  his  name  caused  many 
Republicans,  nicknamed  Mugwumps,  to  desert  to  Cleve-  Elaine's 
land.  Late  in  the  campaign,  by  dining  with  a  company  of  m  luck> 
millionaires  in  New  York  City,  Elaine  gave  his  detractors  opportunity 
to  charge  that  he  was  the  candidate  of  the  capitalists,  while  on  the  same 
day,  in  receiving  a  company  of  Protestant  ministers,  he  allowed  their 
spokesman,  unrebuked,  to  refer  to  the  Democratic  party  as  the  party 
of  "Rum,  Romanism  and  Rebellion."  This  disparagement  of  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church,  unseemly  in  itself  and  extremely  impolitic 
in  the  pivotal  industrial  state  of  New  York  which  had  a  large  Roman 
Catholic  population,  Elaine  did  not  rebuke,  probably  through  inad 
vertence  due  to  physical  weakness,  for  he  surely  bore  no  animosity 
against  that  church.  To  crown  all,  Roscoe  Conkling  refused  to 
lift  his  hand  or  to  say  a  word  for  his  old  enemy,  and  Conkling 
men  by  the  thousand  stayed  away  from  the  polls  on  election  day  or 
voted  for  Cleveland.  Without  New  York,  Elaine  received  182  elec 
toral  votes  to  183  for  Cleveland;  and  a  special  recount,  the  result  of 
which  was  announced  ten  days  after  the  election,  gave  New  York  and 
the  election  to  Cleveland  by  1,149  votes!  The  "grandiloquent 
swell"  and  the  "turkey-gobbler  strut"  were  avenged.  It  was  said 
that  in  Conkling's  own  county  in  New  York  the  Republican  defec 
tion  was  greater  than  Cleveland's  majority  in  the  state.  The  Pro 
hibitionists  cast  150,000  votes,  and  the  Greenbackers  in  this,  their 
last  campaign,  175,000. 

James  G.  Elaine's  race  for  the  presidency  suggests  comparison  with 
that  of  Henry  Clay.     Both  had  been  great  Speakers  of  the  House  of 
Representatives,  great  Senators,  and  great  Secretaries  of    james  Q 
State;  both  had  failed  to  receive  the  nomination  when    Elaine  and 
their  party  was  successful  at  the  polls ;  and  both,  when  at    '  enry  Clay* 
last  chosen,  went  down  to  defeat  through  the  defection  of  a  small 
group  in  their  own  party,  chiefly  in  New  York  State,  which  had  been 
alienated  by  the  candidate's  own  mistakes. 

INDUSTRIAL  UNREST 

Grover  Cleveland  was  the  first  President  elected  after  the  Civil  War 
who  had  not  taken  an  active  part  in  that  struggle.     He  had  been 
district  attorney  of  his  home  county  of  Erie,  New  York,    Grover 
sheriff  of  the  county,  and  mayor  of  the  city  of  Buffalo.    Cleveland. 
While  mayor  he  was  elected  governor  of  the  state  by  the  phenomenal 
majority  of  192,000,  and  while  still  governor  was  elevated  to  the  presi 
dency.    As  mayor  and  as  governor  he  had  proved  to  be  a  singularly 
courageous  and  businesslike  executive,  whose  stirring  veto  messages, 


436 


AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 


President 
Cleveland 
and  the 
people  of  the 
Southern 
States. 


now  in  accord  with  popular  opinion  and  now  boldly  against  it,  won  the 
respect  even  of  his  opponents.    Although  it  was  a  great  triumph  for  his 
party  to  return  to  the  presidency  after  its  exclusion  since  1861,  the  vic 
tory  was  not  complete,  since  from 
1885  to  1889  the  Democrats  lacked 
control  of  the  Senate. 

Believing,  like  Hayes,  in  the 
representation  of  the  reconstructed 
states  in  the  Presi 
dent's  cabinet,  Cleve 
land  invited  two 
ex-Confederates,  L.  Q. 
C.  Lamar  of  Missis 
sippi  and  A.  H.  Garland  of  Ar 
kansas,  to  enter  his  cabinet. 
Southerners  were  sent  abroad  as 
ministers  and  consuls,  and  were 
awarded  a  due  share  of  the  other 
offices  within  the  gift  of  the  Presi 
dent.  This  desire  to  restore  to 
the  South  its  former  position  and 
dignity  in  the  national  govern 
ment  and  to  improve  the  state  of 
feeling  between  the  two  sections 
led  Cleveland  to  go  too  far  in  at 

least  one  instance.  By  an  executive  order  he  directed  the  South 
ern  battle  flags  in  the  War  Department  at  Washington  to  be  restored 
to  the  Southern  States.  One  Northern  governor,  wrongly  concluding 
that  the  order  included  the  restoration  of  the  Confederate  flags  in 
the  various  state  capitols,  sent  a  fiery  telegram  to  the  President,  "No 
rebel  flag  will  be  returned  while  I  am  Governor."  The  order  was 
soon  revoked.  This  friendliness  to  the  South  and  the  veto  of  many 
pensions  bills  made  Cleveland  unpopular  among  the  old  soldiers  of 
the  North  and  their  partisans. 

Most  of  the  leading  questions  of  the  first  Cleveland  administration 
were   directly   connected   with   the   industrial   situation.     The   open 

warfare  between  capital  and  labor,  which  had  already 
Industnal  .    . .  ...  .  TT  .      ,J 

disturbances     caused  disturbance  in  the  administration  of  Hayes,  broke 

18866  year        ou^   w*th   renewed   vigor   in    1886.     The   leading   cham 
pions  of  labor's  cause  at  this  time  were  the  Knights  of 
Labor,  under  the  leadership  of  T.  V.  Powderly.     After  ceasing  to  be  a 
secret  order  in  1882,  the  Knights  so  rapidly  increased  in  numbers  that 


GROVER  CLEVELAND 


AGRARIAN  AND  INDUSTRIAL  UNREST  437 

in  the  critical  year  of  1886,  which  like  the  year  1877  was  a  time  of  indus 
trial  unrest,  the  order  contained  over  700,000  members.  There  were 
one  thousand  five  hundred  strikes  in  the  country  in  1886  and  almost 
as  many  in  the  next  year.  In  the  southwestern  states  in  1886  six 
thousand  miles  of  railway  were  tied  up  by  a  strike  for  over  seven  weeks. 
In  New  York  City  a  strike  on  the  street  railroads  dragged  on  for 
several  months,  and  at  the  height  of  the  trouble  every  car  had  to 
proceed  under  the  guard  of  policemen.  In  the  city  of  Chicago  over 
sixty  thousand  men  and  women  of  different  trades  left  their  work. 

At  the  McCormick  reaper  works  in  the  latter  city,  fierce  riots  broke 
out,  in  the  course  of  which  the  rioters  were  fired  upon  by  the  police 
and  several  workingmen  shot.     On  the  next  day,  when    The  anar_ 
the  strikers  came  together  in  Haymarket  Square,  Chicago,    chist  riots  in 
to  denounce  the  "atrocious  attack  of  the  police"  on  their 
fellow  workmen,  bitter  speeches  were  made,  and  the  police  interfered 
to  break  up  the  meeting.    In  the  confusion  a  bomb  was  exploded,  kill 
ing  seven  of  the  policemen  and  wounding  sixty. 

Coming  at  a  time  of  general  agitation  over  the  mutual  rights  and 
duties  of  labor  and  capital,  the  tragedy  filled  law-abiding  citizens  with 
consternation.      The  assault   was  discovered   to  be   the    The  fate  of 
work  of  anarchists,  who,  though  not  affiliated  with  the    the 
labor  unions,  thought  the  time  of  unrest  a  favorable  oppor 
tunity  to  strike  a  blow  for  their  cause.     An  anarchist  is  one  who  does 
not  believe  in  organized  government,  and  who,  on  the  theory  that  all 
men  ought  to  be  allowed  to  control  their  own  actions,  aims  to  destroy 
existing  government,  some  going  to  the  extreme  of  advocating  even 
murder  to  gain  their  end.     The  punishment  of  the  ringleaders  of  the 
Haymarket  mob  was  demanded,  and  after  a  quick  trial  seven  of  the 
eight  arrested  for  complicity  in  the  murder  were  condemned  to  death. 
Of  these  seven,  four  were  executed,  one  committed  suicide,  and  the 
sentences  of  two  were  commuted  to  life  imprisonment. 

Though  they  did  not  go  to  the  extremes  of  anarchism,  the  friends 
of  labor  were  demanding  radical  changes  in  the  social  order.  Socialism, 
which  advocates  the  control  by  the  state  of  the  means  of  The  growth 
production,  was  slowly  gaining  ground.  Socialistic  prin-  of  socialism, 
ciples  had  been  advocated  in  the  United  States  as  far  back  as 
Andrew  Jackson's  presidency;  the  movement  then  subsided,  but  in 
1874,  in  New  York  City,  there  was  formed  the  Social  Democratic 
Workingmen's  party.  Though  the  Knights  of  Labor  were  not  avowedly 
a  socialist  organization,  their  demands  for  the  common  ownership  of 
the  land  and  for  the  government  control  of  such  public  utilities  as 
railroads,  telegraphs,  and  telephones,  embodied  socialistic  principles. 


438  AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 

The  same  organization  called  for  better  conditions  in  the  mines  and 
factories,  an  eight-hour  day,  the  prohibition  of  child  labor,  compulsory 
arbitration  of  disputes  between  capital  and  labor,  and  an  income  tax. 
Men  and  women  by  the  thousand  were  stimulated  to  serious  thought 
along  these  lines  by  two  popular  books  of  the  period,  Edward  Bel 
lamy's  "Looking  Backward,"  an  imaginary  description  of  an  ideal 
socialistic  community  in  the  year  2000  A.D.,  and  Henry  George's 
"Progress  and  Poverty,"  a  discussion  of  the  related  problems  of  land 
laws  and  taxation. 

Congress  had  already  recognized  the  strength  of  the  labor  move 
ment.  In  response  to  its  demands,  a  law  was  passed  in  1882  for 
Industrial  the  restriction  of  immigration,  and  at  an  even  earlier 
arbitration.  ^ate  a  provision  had  been  made  for  an  eight-hour  day 
for  all  laborers  employed  by  or  on  behalf  of  the  national  govern 
ment.  In  Cleveland's  time  the  national  Bureau  of  Labor  was  estab 
lished  to  gather  statistics  of  labor  from  all  parts  of  the  Union,  and 
in  the  House  of  Representatives  a  standing  committee  on  labor  was 
formed.  In  1886  the  President  sent  to  Congress  the  first  message 
in  the  history  of  the  government  devoted  entirely  to  the  problems 
of  labor,  in  which  he  advocated  a  permanent  national  commission 
of  arbitration  for  the  settlement  of  disputes  between  capital  and 
labor.  Congress  consented  to  pass  such  an  arbitration  law,  to  apply, 
however,  only  to  the  differences  between  the  railroads  and  their 
employees.  The  arbitration  provided  by  this  law  was  not  to  be  com 
pulsory  nor  was  any  means  provided  to  secure  the  enforcement  of  the 
verdicts  reached.  Four  states  followed  the  national  example  by  the 
enactment  of  state  laws  for  the  voluntary  arbitration  of  labor  disputes. 

The  Knights  of  Labor  declined  after  1886  before  the  rising  power  of 
the  American  Federation  of  Labor,  a  rival  organization  formed  in  1881. 
The  Ameri-  While  the  older  society  attempted  to  blot  out  the  individ- 
can  Federa-  ual  unions  and  merge  them  all  in  one  national  society,  the 
tion  of  Labor.  new  organization  preserved  the  individuality  of  the  sepa 
rate  unions  and  brought  them  together  only  on  questions  of  common 
interest.  The  Federation  entered  upon  remarkable  growth  under 
the  leadership  of  its  president,  Samuel  Gompers,  who  had  come  to  the 
United  States  as  a  poor  immigrant  from  England  during  the  Civil  War; 
its  membership  rose  from  262,000  in  1881  to  over  2,000,000  in  1916. 

The  unfair  rates  and  other  abuses  of  the  railroads,  of  which  the 
The  abuses  farming  sections  had  complained  in  the  seventies,  had 
of  the  not  been  corrected.  As  the  volume  of  crops  in  the  West 

railroads.  increased  with  the  growth  of  the  country  in  that  direc 
tion,  the  dissatisfaction  with  the  railroads  grew  stronger.  The  gen- 


AGRARIAN  AND  INDUSTRIAL  UNREST  439 

eral  unrest  in  the  industrial  centers  undoubtedly  tended  to  increase 
the  agrarian  discontent.  The  railroad  rates  were  in  some  cases 
actually  advancing  as  the  result  of  the  continued  consolidation  of 
rival  roads.  Shippers  chafed  under  discriminations  in  rates,  by  which 
certain  localities,  and  even  certain  industries,  secured  lower  rates  than 
others.  To  compensate  them  for  low  rates  on  "long  hauls,"  neces 
sary  because  of  the  competition  of  rival  roads,  high  rates  were  charged 
on  "short  hauls,"  where  there  was  not  the  same  competition.  Com 
petitive  roads  occasionally  "pooled,"  that  is,  combined  their  interests, 
and  by  common  agreement  raised  the  rates  at  the  expense  of  the  public. 
State  regulation  of  railroad  rates,  which  had  been  upheld  by  the 
Supreme  Court  in  the  Granger  cases  in  1877,  to  the  great  satisfaction  of 
the  farming  classes,  were  in  1886  declared  unconstitutional  by  the 
same  tribunal  when  applied  to  interstate  commerce,  on  the  ground 
that  interstate  commerce  lay  within  the  jurisdiction  of  Congress  alone. 
Congress  was  therefore  appealed  to  by  the  agricultural  interests  for  a 
national  law  on  the  subject,  and  that  body  responded  with  a  law,  which, 
while  it  did  not  go  to  the  length  of  fixing  passenger  and  freight  rates 
on  interstate  railroads,  was  an  important  step  in  the  national  regula 
tion  of  these  great  transportation  enterprises.  This  Interstate  Com 
merce  Act  of  1887  forbade  pools  and  discrimination  in  rates,  and 
created  an  Interstate  Commerce  Commission  of  five  members  with 
power  to  investigate  the  books  of  the  railroads  and  to  hold  public 
hearings  on  rate  questions. 

THE  TARIFF,   1865-1889 

The  progress  of  industrialism  after  1865,  the  warfare  of  capital  and 
labor,  the  growing  strength  of  the  big  corporations  and  the  increasing 
opposition  to  them,  put  new  vigor  into  the  agitation  for  History  of 
the  reduction  of  the  tariff.  The  Civil  War  had  brought  the  tariff, 
a  lull  in  the  tariff  controversy,  creating,  as  it  did,  an  unde 
niable  need  for  increased  revenue,  with  which  to  wage  the  war.  In  the 
crisis,  low  tariff  sentiments  were  suppressed  out  of  patriotism,  and 
after  the  war,  when  the  rates  could  be  lowered  again  with  safety  to 
the  treasury,  it  was  found  that  the  sentiment  for  free  trade  had  almost 
disappeared.  The  Republicans,  as  the  party  in  power,  clung  to  protec 
tion,  while  the  Democrats  had  wandered  so  far  from  their  former  ideas 
that  a  long  process  of  education  was  necessary  to  bring  them  back  to 
their  old  advocacy  of  low  rates.  The  convention  that  nominated 
Tilden  for  President  in  1876  had  declared  for  "a  tariff  for  revenue  only," 
but  the  demand  attracted  little  attention  in  the  campaign.  In  1877  a 
free  trade  club  was  organized  in  New  York,  which  started  an  agita- 


440  AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 

tion  that  did  not  die  out,  though  it  took  several  years  to  gain  any  con 
siderable  momentum  for  the  movement.  In  the  presidential  contest 
of  1880  the  subject  was  still  of  secondary  importance,  a  "  local  issue," 
said  General  Hancock,  whose  curt  dismissal  of  the  matter  probably 
lost  him  votes.  President  Arthur  in  1882  surprised  the  Republican 
party  and  the  country  by  urging  on  Congress  a  reduction  of  the  tariff, 
and  that  body  appointed  a  tariff  commission  to  investigate  and  report. 
A  slight  reduction,  the  first  since  the  war,  was  effected  by  the  law  of 
1883.  A  second  bill  in  Arthur's  administration  to  make  further  reduc 
tions  was  defeated  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  where  the  Demo 
crats  were  in  control,  by  the  defection  of  forty-one  Democrats  to  the 
opposition.  Definite  support  of  low  tariff  could  not  yet  be  ascribed 
to  the  Democratic  party,  and  the  inability  of  the  Democrats  to  come 
to  an  agreement  on  the  subject  killed  reform  for  a  number  of  years. 

In  the  Elaine-Cleveland  campaign  of  1884  the  Democrats  in  their 
platform  took  a  pronounced  stand  on  the  subject,  though  the  war  of 

personalities  between  the  two  leading  candidates  tem- 
o?th«?Demo-  Porarily  relegated  tariff  discussion  to  the  background, 
cratic  party  "Unnecessary  taxation  is  unjust  taxation,"  said  the 
tariffWerthe  Plank  of  tne  Democrats:  "We  denounce  the  Republican 

party  for  having  failed  to  relieve  the  people  from  crushing 
war  taxes.  .  .  .  Sufficient  revenue  to  pay  all  the  expenses  of  the 
federal  government  economically  administered,  including  pensions, 
interest  and  principal  of  the  public  debt,  can  be  got,  under  our  present 
system  of  taxation,  from  custom  house  taxes  on  fewer  imported  articles, 
bearing  heaviest  on  articles  of  luxury  and  bearing  lightest  on  articles 
of  necessity."  President  Cleveland  and  his  Secretary  of  the  Treasury 
stood  loyally  by  this  declaration  and  forwarded  the  movement  at  every 
opportunity,  but  the  party  did  not  yet  present  a  united  front  on  the 
issue,  for  enough  Democratic  votes  were  once  more  cast  in  the  House 
of  Representatives  against  a  proposed  reduction  of  the  tariff  rates  to 
defeat  the  measure. 

A  substantial  argument  for  reduction  was  the  existence  of  a  surplus 
in  the  treasury  of  the  United  States,  just  as  there  had  been  in  Andrew 
A  surplus  Jackson's  time.  This  did  not  now  indicate  that  there  was 
in  the  no  national  debt,  but  merely  that  the  receipts  were  piling  up 

treasury.  .R  ^  treasury  faster  than  it  was  feasible  to  pay  off  the 
debt.  For  the  year  1870  there  was  a  surplus  of  $102,000,000,  for  1880 
$68,000,000,  and  for  1887  the  amount  totalled  $103,000,000.  The 
vast  debt  of  the  Civil  War  existed  mainly  in  the  form  of  United  States 
bonds,  which  were  to  run  for  a  certain  number  of  years  before  they 
matured,  that  is,  before  they  could  be  paid  off  in  full.  The  government 


AGRARIAN  AND  INDUSTRIAL  UNREST  441 

might  go  into  the  market  and  itself  buy  up  its  own  bonds,  probably 
at  a  premium,  and  thus  bring  it  about  that  it  would  owe  the  debt  to 
itself.  This  would  furnish  a  use  for  the  surplus  and  introduce  into 
circulation  among  the  people  the  money  then  tied  up  in  the  treasury. 
It  was  not  certain,  however,  even  if  the  government  should  attempt  to 
take  this  step,  that  all  the  holders  of  the  bonds  would  consent  to  part 
with  them;  nor  was  it  desirable  that  the  government  come  into  pos 
session  of  its  own  bonds,  for  the  national  banks  stood  in  need  of  them 
as  a  basis  for  their  circulating  notes. 

Jackson's  plan  of  distributing  the  surplus  among  the  states  did  not 
appeal  to  Cleveland.     In  an  able  message  entirely  devoted  to  the  tariff, 

he  recommended  to  Congress  that  they  reduce  the  amount 

.  ,  J    ,  .          ,  Cleveland's 

ot  money  coming  into  the  treasury  by  lowering  the  rates    tariff  reform 

of  the  tariff.     The  existing  tariff  rates,  according  to  his    J^  age  of 
views,  were  a  "vicious,  inequitable  and   illogical   source 
of  unnecessary   taxation"  and  "ought   to   be   at  once   revised   and 
amended.   .    .    .   The  simple  and  plain  duty  which  we  owe  the  people 
is  to  reduce  taxation  to   the  necessary  expenses  of  an  economical 
operation  of  the  government,  and  to  restore  to  the  business  of  the 
country  the   money   which   we   hold   in   the   treasury    through    the 
perversion  of  governmental  powers." 

Through  the  influence  of  the  President  the  House  of  Representatives 
passed  a  bill  providing  for  a  general  lowering  of  the  tariff  rates ;  but  at 
the  same  time  the  Republican  Senate  passed  a  measure  of 
its   own,   increasing   the   rates.     Since   the   two   Houses    Jj^ement  of 
failed  to  come  to  an  agreement,  the  one  result  of  the    the  two 
situation  was  to  set  the  tariff  before  the  people  as  the    congress, 
leading  issue  for  the  coming  presidential  contest.     The 
passage  of  President  Cleveland's  measure  in  the  lower  House  of  Con 
gress,  where   only   four   Democrats   stood   out   against   the   change, 
proved  that  his  endeavor  to  educate  his  party  to  favor  tariff  reform 
was  making  headway.     It  remained  for  the  people  to  record  their 
judgment  on  the  matter  at  the  polls. 

The  Republican  nomination  in  1888  would  probably  have  gone  to 
their  defeated  candidate  of  the  previous  contest,  had  not  that  states 
man  refused  the  honor;  instead,  at  Elaine's  own  suggestion, 
cabled  to  the  convention  from  Europe,  the  nomination 
was  given  to  Benjamin  Harrison,  United  States  Senator 
from  Indiana,  the  grandson  of  ex-President  William 
Henry  Harrison.  The  Democrats  renominated  President  Cleveland 
by  acclamation.  The  Prohibitionists  again  put  forward  a  candidate, 
while  the  disturbed  industrial  classes,  who  were  making  a  strong  show- 


442  AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 

ing  in  trade  unions, .  again  entered  national  politics  in  two  parties,  the 
Union  Labor  party  and  the  United  Labor  party.  The  Greenback  party 
was  dead,  and  no  other  party  immediately  arose  to  take  its  place  as 
an  advocate  of  the  agrarian  interests. 

The  country  was  not  ready  to  accept  a  lowering  of  the  tariff,  such 
as  that  to  which  Cleveland  had  committed  the  Democratic  party,  and 
The  result  Harrison  was  elected  by  a  vote  of  233  to  168  in  the  electo- 
at  the  polls.  ral  colleges.  Again  the  Empire  State  of  New  York  was 
closely  contested.  Cleveland's  failure  to  carry  his  own  state, 
through  the  loss  of  a  large  part  of  the  Democratic  vote  of  New  York 
City,  cost  him  the  election.  He  had  offended  Tammany  Hall  by 
his  extreme  independence  while  governor  of  the  state,  and  the  sup 
port  which  they  reluctantly  gave  to  him  in  1884  they  refused  to  give 
in  1888. 

NON-PARTISAN    LAWS    CONCERNING    MATTERS    OF    GOVERNMENT 

Because  the  Democrats  in.  Cleveland's  administration  at  no  time 
had  complete  control  of  both  Houses  of  Congress,  the  congressional 
The  Presi-  legislation  of  the  period  was  essentially  non-partisan.  Of 
dential  Sue-  such  nature  were  the  laws  in  regard  to  the  arbitration  of 
industrial  disputes  and  the  regulation  of  the  railroads. 
Three  laws  were  passed  relating  to  matters  of  national  administra 
tion.  The  Presidential  Succession  Act  provided  that  in  case  of  the 
death,  removal,  or  inability  to  serve  of  both  the  President  and 
Vice-President,  the  presidency  should  pass  to  the  Secretary  of  State, 
and  after  him  to  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  the  Secretary  of  War, 
and  to  the  other  members  of  the  cabinet  in  an  order  designated  by 
the  law.  Previously,  in  the  contingency  of  the  death  or  inability  to 
serve  of  both  the  President  and  Vice-President,  the  succession  was  to 
fall  to  the  President  of  the  Senate  and  from  him  to  the  Speaker  of  the 
House  of  Representatives.  This  old  arrangement  was  an  unwise  one, 
inasmuch  as -on  some  occasions  there  was  neither  a  President  of  the 
Senate  nor  a  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Representatives.  If  on  such 
an  occasion  there  had  occurred  a  vacancy  in  both  the  presidency  and 
the  vice-presidency,  succession  to  the  presidency  would  have  been  un 
provided  for  and  the  wheels  of  government  would  have  been  tempo 
rarily  stopped.  In  1885,  when  Vice  President  Hendricks  died,  there 
was  no  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Representatives  as  the  House  was 
not  yet  organized,  so  that  the  life  of  President  Cleveland  alone  stood 
between  organized  government  and  a  cessation  of  government.  This 
situation  called  attention  to  the  necessity  of  change.  Under  the  old 
system,  too,  since  it  was  possible  for  both  the  President  of  the  Senate 


AGRARIAN  AND  INDUSTRIAL  UNREST  443 

and  the  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Representatives  to  belong  to  another 
party  than  that  of  the  President,  the  death  of  both  the  President  and 
the  Vice-President  might  entail  an  overturn  of  politics  in  the  adminis 
trative  control  of  the  government,  which  would  be  unfair  after  the 
people's  will  had  been  expressed  in  a  presidential  election. 

An  Electoral  Law  was  passed  rendering  impossible  such  disputes 
over  the  counting  of  the  electoral  votes  as  had  occurred  in  1876.     It 
provided  that  each  state  should  settle  any  dispute  arising 
between  rival  electoral  colleges  in  that  state,  and  that  if    Electoral 
such  a  dispute  should  not  be  settled  by  the  state,  the  joint    Law»  and 
session  of  Congress  should  proceed  to  decide  it  under    the  'Tenure 
definite  regulations  indicated  by  the  law.     Finally  the    of  Office 
Tenure  of  Office  Act,  which  had  been  passed  by  Congress 
in  the  course  of  its  quarrel  with  President  Johnson,  was  repealed. 

In  1888  the  states  began  to  adopt  a  new  form  of  ballot  known  as 
the  secret  or  Australian  ballot,  in  order  to  lessen  the  evils  of  bribery, 
intimidation,  ballot-box  stuffing,  and  other  election  The  Austral- 
abuses  which,  it  was  claimed,  were  especially  rife  in  the  ian  ballot- 
presidential  contest  of  1884.  So  rapidly  did  the  reform  spread  that 
by  1896,  eight  years  after  the  first  state,  Kentucky,  took  the  step,  only 
three  states  had  failed  to  adopt  the  method  to  some  extent.  Under 
the  new  system,  the  state  itself  assumed  the  expense  of  furnishing 
ballots  of  uniform  size  and  color,  containing  the  names  of  candidates 
of  all  parties;  the  voter  was  not  allowed,  as  formerly,  to  bring  to  the 
polls  a  ballot  which  he  had  previously  prepared,  but  must  use  only 
the  ballot  given  him  by  the  election  officials  and  must  mark  it  secretly 
in  a  booth  by  himself.  In  arranging  the  names  on  the  ballot  various 
plans  have  been  followed.  On  the  so-called  " Massachusetts  ballot" 
the  names  of  the  candidates  are  arranged  alphabetically  under  the  title 
of  each  office;  there  is  no  party  emblem,  such  as  a  flag  or  an  eagle,  to 
guide  the  ignorant  voter,  but  after  each  candidate's  name  there  is  usually 
printed  the  name  of  his  party.  To  vote  such  a  ballot  a  cross  must  be 
placed  opposite  the  name  of  each  candidate  voted  for.  This  method  is 
supposed  to  encourage  independent  voting.  On  the  "Indiana"  or 
party  column  ballot,  which  is  the  one  most  extensively  used,  the 
names  of  all  candidates  of  a  single  party  are  placed  in  a  separate 
column  with  the  party  emblem  at  the  top,  and  a  circle  within  which 
the  voter  may  place  a  cross  to  vote  a  " straight  ticket"  if  he  so  desires, 
with  the  opportunity  to  place  crosses  after  individual  names  if  he  wishes 
to  " split"  his  ticket. 


444  AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 

GENERAL  REFERENCES 

E.  STANWOOD,  James  G.  Elaine;  C.  R.  WILLIAMS,  Rutherford  Birchard  Hayes;  T.  E. 
BURTON,  John  Sherman;  BEARD,  Contemporary  History;  E.  B.  ANDREWS,  Last  Quarter 
Century;  H.  T.  PECK,  Twenty  Years  of  the  Republic;  SPARKS,  National  Development; 
E.  V.  SMALLEY,  The  Northern  Pacific  Railroad. 

SPECIAL  TOPICS 

1.  INDUSTRIAL  STRIFE  IN  1877.     DEWEY,  National  Problems,  71-78;  J.  A.  DACUS, 
Annals  of  Great  Strikes;  Labor  Strikes,  in  Appleton's  Annual  Cyclopaedia  for  1877. 

2.  CIVIL  SERVICE  REFORM.     Annual  Reports  of  the  United  States  Civil  Service 
Commission;   DEWEY,  National  Problems,  21-40;  FISH,  Civil  Service  and  Patronage, 
209-246;  BEARD,  American  Government  and  Politics,  222-230. 

3.  THE  DISTURBED  YEAR  OF   1886.     DEWEY,  National  Problems,  40-112:  HILL, 
Decisive  Battles,  240-268;  Epochs,  X,  57-63;  D.  D.  LUM,  Trial  of  Chicago  Anarchists; 
Anarchists,  in  Appleton's  Annual  Cyclopaedia  for  1886. 

ILLUSTRATIVE  MATERIAL 

P.  L.  FORD,  Honorable  Peter  Stirling. 

SUGGESTIVE  QUESTIONS 

In  what  respects  was  Hayes  a  strong  President?  Would  his  renomination  by 
the  Republicans  in  1880  have  been  politically  wise?  Was  the  United  States  justified 
in  excluding  Chinese  immigrants?  Why  was  President  Cleveland  unpopular  with 
the  old  Union  soldiers?  Compare  the  industrial  unrest  of  Jackson's  time,  of  the 
days  of  the  Civil  War,  of  1877,  and  of  1886.  What  in  general  was  the  develop 
ment  of  capital  and  labor  during  the  period?  Why  were  the  Democrats  said  to  "need 
education  on  the  tariff"  after  1865?  Compare  Cleveland's  solution  of  the  surplus 
in  the  United  States  treasury  with  that  of  Jackson.  Why  were  there  so  many  non- 
partisan  laws  passed  in  Cleveland's  time,  1885-1889?  What  were  the  leading  current 
issues  before  the  people  in  the  presidential  campaigns  of  1880,  1884,  and  1888? 


CHAPTER   XXVII 
PROSPERITY,   PANIC,   AND   SLOW   RECOVERY 

THE  LEGISLATIVE  RECORD  OF  THE  REPUBLICANS,    1889-1891 

BY  their  victory  in  1888  the  Republicans  won  not  only  the  presi 
dency  but  both  houses  of  Congress.  Before  passing  any  laws,  they 
undertook  to  improve  the  rules  of  procedure  in  the  House 
of  Representatives.  For  some  years  the  minority  in  that  jhtf  nSeVof 
body,  sometimes  Democratic  and  sometimes  Republican,  the  House  of 
had  been  in  the  habit  of  blocking  legislation  by  means  tat?ves.en 
of  dilatory  motions,  that  is,  motions  to  consume  time, 
such  as  motions  to  adjourn.  The  custom  had  grown  rapidly  in  the 
eighties.  Speaker  Thomas  B.  Reed  of  Maine,  placed  in  the  Speaker's 
chair  by  the  Republicans  in  1889,  broke  up  the  practice  by  arbitrarily 
refusing  to  put  a  dilatory  motion  to  the  House.  Another  device  of 
the  minority  to  block  legislation  had  been  for  the  members,  though 
present,  to  refuse  to  vote.  As  it  was  the  parliamentary  custom  to 
consider  a  member  absent  who  did  not  vote,  the  minority  party  was 
often  able  in  this  way  to  prevent  a  quorum  to  do  business.  Speaker 
Reed  put  an  end  to  the  practice  by  counting  all  silent  members  as 
present  and  thus  securing  a  quorum.  When  one  member  denied  the 
Speaker's  right  to  count  him  as  present  and  desired  to  "read  from 
parliamentary  law  on  the  subject,"  Reed  coolly  replied,  "The  chair  is 
making  a  statement  of  fact  that  the  gentleman  is  present.  Does  he 
deny  it?"  The  Speaker  was  denounced  as  "tyrant"  and  "Czar,"  but 
lived  to  see  his  new  rules  sustained  by  the  Supreme  Court  and  accepted 
even  by  the  Democrats  as  the  permanent  rules  of  the  House. 

With   their  house  in   order,   the   Republicans  proceeded   to   con 
structive  legislation.     The  first  measure  passed  was  a  concession  to 
the  growing  sentiment  against  large  business  corporations    The  Sherman 
or  trusts.     An  Anti-Trust  Act,  proposed  by  John  Sherman,    Anti-Trust 
United  States  Senator  from  Ohio,  followed  up  the  Inter-      aw* 
state  Commerce  Commission  Act  passed  in  the  previous  administra 
tion.     This  Sherman  Act  was  entitled  "An  Act  to  protect  trade  and 
commerce  against  unlawful  restraints  and  monopolies,"  and  provided, 
first,  that  "every  contract,  combination  in  the  form  of  trust  or  other- 

445 


446  AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 

wise,  or  conspiracy  in  restraint  of  trade  or  commerce  among  the  several 
states,  or  with  foreign  nations,  is  hereby  declared  to  be  illegal,"  and 
second,  that  "to  monopolize  any  part  of  the  trade  or  commerce  among 
the  several  states"  was  likewise  illegal.  The  act  did  not  forbid  every 
corporation  or  trust  as  such,  but  only  those  engaged  "in  restraint  of 
trade  or  commerce  among  the  several  states";  and  it  did  not  define 
what  were  restraints  of  trade,  and  what  were  monopolies,  but  left 
the  definition  of  these  terms  to  the  courts. 

Strange  as  it  may  seem,  this  law  was  allowed  to  lie  dormant  on  the 
statute  books  for  fourteen  years,  while  giant  monopolies  rapidly 
developed.  Since  1904  it  has  been  enforced  with  increasing  vigor 
each  year,  and  at  the  present  day,  with  certain  amendments,  it  is  the 
government's  chief  weapon  against  monopolies. 

At  about  the  same  time  Congress  passed  another  important  act 
of  legislation  in  the  Sherman  Silver  Purchase  Act,  which  went  farther 
in  the  direction  of  free  coinage  of  silver  than  had  the  Bland- 
SUver  l  Allison  Act  of  1878.  The  Bland-Allison  Act,  it  will  be 

ActChaSC  recalled,  had  directed  the  United  States  to  purchase  for 
coinage  into  silver  dollars  not  less  than  $2,000,000  nor 
more  than  $4,000,000  worth  of  silver  every  month.  Under  its  working, 
during  the  troubled  decade  of  the  eighties,  the  demand  in  the  West 
for  the  free  coinage  of  silver,  which  it  had  been  the  object  of  the  act 
to  satisfy,  continued  to  increase,  while  the  price  of  silver  continued 
to  decline.  This  demand  the  Republicans  in  1890  deemed  it  wise  to 
recognize.  The  Senate,  with  recently  admitted  members  from  several 
new  Western  States,  was  ready  to  accede  to  the  extreme  demand  for 
free  silver,  but  the  House  of  Representatives  stood  opposed,  and  the 
compromise  Sherman  Silver  Purchase  Act  was  the  result.  This  law 
no  longer  allowed  discretion  in  the  amount  of  silver  to  be  purchased, 
but  directed  the  purchase  by  the  government  of  4,500,000  ounces  of 
silver  every  month,  an  annual  amount  equivalent  to  the  total  silver 
production  of  the  country  in  1890.  In  payment  for  this  silver  the 
government  was  to  issue  treasury  notes  which  were  to  circulate  as 
money.  Still  the  price  of  silver  continued  to  decline. 

That  the  passage  of  the  Sherman  Anti-Trust  Law  and  of  the  Sher 
man  Silver  Purchase  Act,  by  a  party  popularly  supposed  to  be  friendly 
The  McKin-  to  conservative  interests,  was  not  without  a  purpose,  was 
ley  Tariff  revealed  a  few  months  later  when  the  McKinley  Tariff 
Law'  Law  of  1890  was  passed.  It  was  in  return  for  the  enact 

ment  of  the  two  laws  for  the  benefit  of  the  radicals,  that  the  conservative 
Republicans  claimed  and  secured  the  support  of  a  sufficient  number 
of  radicals  to  write  into  the  statute  books  this  highest  tariff  law  in  the 


PROSPERITY,  PANIC,  AND   SLOW  RECOVERY  447 

history  of  the  country  to  that  time.  The  law  received  its  name  from 
William  McKinley  of  Ohio,  Chairman  of  the  Ways  and  Means  Com 
mittee  of  the  House  of  Representatives,  which  framed  the  bill.  Aside 
from  the  higher  rates  imposed,  the  new  act  possessed  two  unique 
features.  First,  it  placed  raw  sugar  on  the  free  list  and  offered  a  bounty 
of  two  cents  a  pound  for  the  production  of  domestic  sugar,  while  to 
protect  the  domestic  refineries  a  duty  was  placed  on  refined  sugar. 
Second,  through  the  efforts  of  James  G.  Elaine,  whom  President  Har 
rison  had  made  Secretary  of  State,  the  principle  of  reciprocity,  or 
reciprocal  free  trade,  was  embodied  in  the  act.  By  this  plan,  certain 
products,  chiefly  from  the  West  Indies  and  Central  and  South  America, 
such  as  hides,  molasses,  tea,  and  coffee,  were  put  on  a  provisional  free 
list,  the  President  to  have  the  power  of  restoring  the  duty  at  specified 
rates  for  any  country  if  he  decided  that  that  country  was  imposing 
unfair  rates  on  articles  imported  from  the  United  States.  More  than  a 
dozen  nations  secured  the  proffered  concessions.  Others  with  whom 
the  President  could  not  come  to  agreement  were  forced  to  pay  the 
higher  rates  in  the  United  States.  The  Republicans  had  answered 
Cleveland's  challenge  to  lower  the  tariff  and  bring  less  revenue  into  the 
national  treasury  by  boldly  enacting  a  law  to  raise  the  rates  and  bring 
in  more  revenue. 

A  programme  of  heavy  national  expenditures  was  the  Republican 
solution  of  the  surplus.     The  Dependent  Pension  Law,  similar  to  a  bill 
vetoed  by  Cleveland,  was  passed,  under  which  the  annual    Heavy  na_ 
outlay  of  $88,000,000  for  pensions  in  1889,  rose  to  $159,-    tionai  ex- 
000,000  in  1893.     From  1889  to  1893  the  annual  expendi-    per 
tures  for  the  navy  rose  from  $21,000,000  to  $30,000,000.     So  heavy 
did-  the   expenditures   of   the   central  government   become   that   the 
Democrats  in  derision,  and  to  sound  a  note  of  alarm,  styled  this  Conr 
gress  of  1889-1891  "a  billion-dollar  Congress."     The  charge  was  true 
that  the  appropriations  of  this  Congress  reached  one  billion  dollars^ 
but   Speaker   Reed    retorted   for   the  Republicans   that   the   United 
States  was  "a  billion-dollar  country."     As  a  result  of  high  protection, 
heavy  national  expenditures  on  pensions,  the  navy,  public  buildings, 
rivers    and    harbors,   and   other  improvements,   have   remained   the 
Republican  policy. 

Few  Congresses  in  time  of  peace  have  passed  such  an  array  of 
important  laws  as  were  passed  by  this  first  Congress  of  the  administra 
tion  of   Benjamin  Harrison.     These,  as   we  have   seen,    other 
embraced  laws  on  the  trusts,  silver,  the  tariff,  pensions,    Republican 
and  the  navy.     In  addition  an  Anti-Lottery  Law  excluded 
lottery  tickets  from  the  mails,  another  law  compelled  the  land-grant 


AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 


railroads,  which  had  not  made  use  of  their  lands,  to  restore  these  to  the 
government,  and  another  made  minor  changes  in  the  regulation  of 
immigration. 

The  same  Congress  (1889-1891)  admitted  into  the  Union  six  new 
states,  South  Dakota,  North  Dakota,  Montana,  and  Washington  in 
More  new  1889,  and  Wyoming  and  Idaho  in  1890.  No  other  twelve 
states  in  the  months  in  the  history  of  the  country  have  witnessed  the 

creation  of  so  many  new  states.  At  the  close  of  the  War 
of  1812,  when  the  frontier  lay  in  the  basin  of  the  Mississippi  in  the  in 
terior  of  the  continent,  it  was  considered  rapid  progress  when  five 
states  were  admitted  in  as  many  years,  but  during  this  industrial  era 
at  the  end  of  the  century  the  West  was  enjoying  an  unprecedented 
growth.  The  admission  of  Utah  followed  in  1896. 

A  second  Pacific  Railroad  aided  the  Union  Pacific  in  moving  the 
human  tide  to  the  new  communities.  This  new  road  was  the  Northern 
The  North  Pacific,  completed  in  1883  after  more  than  ten  years' 
ern  Pacific  work,  from  Duluth  on  Lake  Superior  to  Helena,  Montana, 

and  in  1893  to  Tacoma  on  Puget  Sound.  Within  the 
decade  of  the  eighties  at  least  800,000  took  up  their  residence  along  its 
route.  It  was  like  the  movements  of  population  that  had  followed 
the  completion  of  the  Erie  Canal  and  the  Union  Pacific  Railroad. 
The  progress  of  the  West  is  represented  graphically  by  the  fol 
lowing  table: 


Made 

Population 

State 

1850 

1860 

1870 

1880 

1890 

1900 

I9IO 

South  Dakota  . 

1889 

4,000 

14,000 

135,000 

348,000 

401  ,000 

583,000 

North  Dakota  . 

1889 

190,000 

319,000 

577,ooo 

Montana   

1889 

20,000 

39,000 

142,000 

243,000 

376,ooo 

Washington  .  .  . 

1889 

11,000 

23,000 

75,000 

3S7,ooo 

518,000 

1,141,000 

Wyoming  

1890 

9,000 

20,000 

62,000 

92,000 

145,000 

Idaho  

1890 

14,000 

32,000 

88,000 

161,000 

325,000 

Utah  

1896 

11,000 

40,000 

86,000 

143,000 

210,000 

276,000 

373,ooo 

Oklahoma  

1907 

258,000 

790,000 

1,657,000 

New  Mexico  .  .  . 

1912 

61,000 

93,000 

91,000 

119,000 

160,000 

195,000 

327,000 

Arizona  

1912 

9,000 

40,000 

88,000 

122,000 

204,000 

A  writer  of  the  time  declared  concerning  the  rapid  changes: 
"  Living  men,  not  very  old  yet,  have  seen  the  Indians  on  the  war-path, 
R  id  the  buffaloes  stopping  the  trains,  the  cowboy  driving  his 

changes  in        cattle,  the  herder  watching  his  sheep,  the  government 
irrigation  dam,  and  the  automobile  —  have  seen  every 
one  of  these  slides  which  progress  puts  for  a  moment  into  its  magic 
lantern  and  removes  to  replace  with  a  new  one."    Says  another  writer, 


PROSPERITY,  PANIC,  AND  SLOW  RECOVERY  449 

who  compares  the  peopling  of  the  United  States  with  the  expansion 
of  Russia  over  Siberia,  "The  development  of  the  original  thirteen 
states  into  the  present  Union,  extending  from  the  Atlantic  to  the 
Pacific  and  from  Mexico  to  Canada,  remains  one  of  the  most  marvelous 
achievements  of  human  history." 

Farther  south,  a  part  of  Indian  Territory  under  the  name  of  Okla 
homa,  "the  beautiful  land,"  was  thrown  open  to  white  settlement 
by  a  proclamation  of  the  President,  April  22,  1889.  For  xhe  settle- 
many  years  the  whites  had  coveted  the  rich  lands  of  ment  of 
this  reservation,  but  had  been  warded  off  by  the  govern 
ment  till  it  could  acquire  for  them  .a  legal  title  to  the  lands.  The 
opening  was  picturesque.  Fifty  thousand  people  were  waiting  for 
the  signal  to  advance  over  the  boundary  line  and  make  their  choice 
of  the  rich  lands.  Many  were  successful  and  many  failed.  "Whole 
outfits  for  towns,  including  portable  houses,  were  shipped  by  rail,  and 
individual  families,  in  picturesque,  primitive,  white-covered  wagons 
journeyed  forward,  stretching  out  for  miles  in  an  unbroken  line.  .  .  . 
The  blast  of  a  bugle  at  noon  on  a  beautiful  spring  day  was  a  signal  for 
the  wild  rush  across  the  borders.  Men  on  horseback  and  on  foot, 
in  every  conceivable  vehicle,  sought  homes  with  the  utmost  speed,  and 
before  nightfall  town  sites  were  laid  out  for  several  thousand  inhabit 
ants  each."  By  three  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  of  the  opening  day  the 
town  of  Guthrie  was  already  laid  out,  with  four  business  streets  lined 
with  shops  and  offices  installed  in  tents.  There  was  even  a  bank  with 
a  capital  of  $50,000  and  a  daily  paper.  By  four  o'clock  a  city  council 
had  been  elected.  A  census  at  the  end  of  the  year  revealed  the  pres 
ence  of  60,000  people  in  the  territory. 

In  1891  there  was  another  rush  into  a  second  part  of  the  forming 
state,  and  again  into  a  third  part  in  1893.     The  population  of  Oklahoma 
in  1900  was  790,000,  in  1907,  when  it  was  admitted  into    Rapid 
the  Union  as  the  forty-sixth  state,  1,114,000,  and  in  1910,    growth  of 
1,650,000.     The  population  of  Oklahoma  City  rose  from    1  tory' 

4000  in  1890  to  10,000  in  1900  and  to  64,000  in  1910,  a  gain  of  five  hun 
dred  and  thirty-nine  per  cent  in  a  single  decade  and  the  most  rapid 
gain  of  any  city  in  the  nation  during  that  period. 

With  the  rapid  filling  of  the  western  lands  there  came  a  revolution 
ary  change  in  the  government's  method  of  dealing  with  its  Indian 
charges.     Reservations  for  them  had  first  been  set  aside    The  Indian 
in  the  early  part  of  the  nineteenth  century,  under  a  loose    reservations, 
construction  of  that  clause  of  the  Constitution  which  gives  Congress 
the  power  "to  regulate  commerce  with  the  Indian  tribes."     Indian 
Territory  had  been  assigned  to  them  when  Georgia  was  ridding  itself 


450  AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 

of  the  Creeks  and  Cherokees;  and  from  time  to  time  scores  of  smaller 
Indian  reservations  had  been  made  on  the  public  domain.  The 
Indians  on  the  reservations  were  allowed  to  retain  their  tribal  govern 
ment  and  laws;  it  was  not  necessary  for  them  to  work  for  their  own 
support;  supplies  were  distributed  to  them  by  the  government  through 
a  resident  superintendent  or  agent;  schools  were  maintained  for  their 
welfare;  liquor  and  firearms  were  forbidden  to  them;  and  white  trad 
ers  were  excluded  from  their  midst.  In  the  judgment  of  the  Supreme 
Court  the  Indians  could  not  be  regarded  as  citizens  of  an  Indian 
nation,  since  under  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  there  could 
be  no  such  thing  as  a  state  within  a  state,  nor  yet  were  they  citizens 
of  the  United  States.  Rather  they  were  wards,  cared  for  by  the  United 
States  as  by  a  protector.  In  their  anomalous  position  the  Indians 
had  no  civilized  law,  for  they  were  not  yet  sufficiently  advanced  to 
make  laws  of  their  own  according  to  the  standards  of  civilization,  while 
the  laws  of  the  United  States  applied  to  the  Indians  only  by  rare 
special  enactment. 

Such  a  system  tended  to  pauperize  the  Indians  and  to  deprive  them 
of  all  incentive  to  individual  effort.  Two  classes  urged  a  change. 
O  ositi  n  First,  there  were  those  who  confessed  the  failure  of  the 
toPth°eS1  *  reservation  principle  and  wished  it  discarded  for  one 


wm'ch  would  throw  the  Indians  on  their  own  resources 
and  develop  their  initiative  and  self-reliance.  Second, 
there  was  the  large  army  of  restless  whites,  looking  for  more  lands  and 
each  year  finding  the  search  more  difficult,  who  coveted  the  Indian 
lands  for  themselves.  White  settlement  was  retarded  by  the  existence 
of  the  reservations,  and  the  building  of  railroads  and  other  improve 
ments  was  frequently  blocked. 

The  first  sign  of  change  came  while  Grant  was  President,  when 
Congress  discarded  its  customary  habit  of  dealing  with  the  Indians 
A  new  ky  the  method  of  a  treaty.  There  always  lurked  in  such 

Indian  procedure  the  implication  that  the  Indians  were  a  nation 

to  be  dealt  with  like  other  nations.  In  1886  the  Supreme 
Court  reversed  its  former  view  of  the  Indian  status  and  decided  that 
the  Indians  were  no  longer  wards  without  law,  but  that  the  benefits 
and  the  obligations  of  the  law  of  the  United  States  applied  to  them 
as  well  as  to  whites.  In  the  next  year  Congress  passed  the  Dawes 
Act,  under  which,  with  later  amendments,  if  the  President  deems  that 
a  reservation  should  be  divided  up  for  farming  purposes,  he  may 
cause  it  be  to  surveyed  and  allotted  to  the  heads  of  the  Indian  families 
of  the  reservation,  while  he  himself  holds  their  land  in  trust  for  them 
for  twenty-five  years.  At  the  end  of  this  period  the  Indians  are  to 


PROSPERITY,  PANIC,  AND   SLOW  RECOVERY  451 

receive  the  deed  to  their  lands,  with  the  full  rights  of  United  States 
citizenship,  the  privilege  of  selling  the  lands,  and  of  deporting  them 
selves  in  general  like  ordinary  citizens  of  the  republic.  The  right  to 
obtain  liquor  is  denied  till  full  citizenship  is  acquired  at  the  end  of  the 
twenty-five  years,  and  the  benevolent  educational  institutions  of  the 
government,  administered  impartially  both  for  Indian  citizens  and 
for  Indian  wards,  are  still  maintained  at  a  cost  to  the  United  States  of 
over  $6,000,000  a  year.  By  way  of  exception,  the  President  may 
award  the  lands  to  capable  individual  Indians  without  waiting  for  the 
period  of  twenty-five  years  to  elapse.  In  1914  the  entire  Cherokee 
tribe  became  United  States  citizens,  and  the  tribal  organization  was 
formally  dissolved. 

In  1910  there  were  in  the  United  States  265,000  Indians  and  in 
Alaska  25,000,  slightly  more  in  each  case  than  in  1900.     Scattered 
over  the  Union  in  the  various  states  are  two  hundred  and    Indian 
eighty  tribes,  ten  represented  by  only  one  member  each,    statistics. 
The  largest  tribe  was  the  Cherokee  before  its  dissolution  in   1914, 
with  31,000   members;    others    are    the    Navajos    with    22,000,    the 
Chippewas  with  20,000,  the  Choctaws  with  15,000,  and   the   Sioux 
with  14,000.     One-fourth  of  all  the  Indians  are  centered  in  Oklahoma. 

With  the  rapid  settlement  of  Oklahoma  and  of  the  six  Northwestern 
States  admitted  in  1889-1890,  the  unsettled  lands  of  the  United  States 
practically  disappeared,  and  the  western  frontier,  as  a  The  ^sap_ 
feature  of  American  life,  passed  away.  Of  the  many  pearance  of 
millions  of  acres  once  in  the  hands  of  the  government 
only  a  few  small  Indian  reservations  remained  unoccupied  by  whites. 
The  dissatisfied  classes  of  the  settled  portions  of  the  country  could 
no  longer  "go  West"  to  cheap  lands  in  their  time  of  trouble  to 
mend  their  fortunes  in  the  new  country,  for  the  cheap  lands  were 
all  but  impossible  to  secure.  For  almost  three  centuries,  from  the 
time  of  the  first  English  settlement  in  1607,  civilization  had  been 
bordered  by  wilderness,  and  in  all  that  long  period,  as  population 
increased,  the  vaguely  located  border  between  civilization  and  wilder 
ness  had  been  constantly  pushed  westward.  The  frontier  bred  free 
dom,  equality,  disregard  of  conventions,  and  the  spirit  of  progress,  and 
had  contributed  these  qualities  to  the  national  life.  The  West  in  gen 
eral  stood  for  radicalism,  the  East  for  conservatism,  and  the  history  of 
the  country  had  been  largely  the  resultant  of  the  interaction  of  these 
two  forces.  The  disappearance  of  the  frontier  and  the  growing 
clashes  of  capital  and  labor  were  more  than  a  coincidence.  As  the 
restless  were  no  longer  drawn  off  to  the  frontier  lands  and  the  East 
and  the  West  tended  to  become  more  and  more  like  one  another,  the 


452  AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 

turbulence  of  the  radical  element  found  vent  in  class  rather  than  in 
section,  and  the  fermentation  of  the  labor  world  was  a  result. 

After  the  demise  of  the  Greenback  party  following  the  presidential 
contest  of  1884,  the  agrarian  element,  as  such,  had  kept  out  of  politics. 
The  rise  of  The  two  societies,  the  Patrons  of  Husbandry  and  the 
the  Populist  Farmers'  Alliance,  the  latter  of  which  claimed  3,000,000 
members  in  1890,  were  still  non-political.  In  1890,  how 
ever,  the  Alliance  placed  congressional  and  state  candidates  in  the 
field  and  forced  the  country  into  a  recognition  of  their  strength  by 
electing  nine  members  of  the  national  House  of  Representatives  and 
two  members  of  the  national  Senate. 

As  the  Senate  was  Republican  and  the  House  of  Representatives 
Democratic  during  the  last  two  years  of  Harrison's  presidency,  the 
The  presi-  hands  of  the  Republican  administration  were  tied,  and  to 

dential  elec-  j|-s  en(j  m  z  go ?  few  more  laws  of  importance  were  passed, 
tion  of  1892.  .  .  r ,  .  . 

The  in  1891,  in  preparation  for  the  presidential  contest  of  the 

Populists.  next  year,  the  Farmers'  Alliance  and  their  sympathizers 
formally  organized  themselves  into  a  national  party  under  the  name 
of  the  People's  or  Populist  party.  Their  platform,  adopted  in  1892, 
was  a  radical  declaration.  "The  fruits  of  the  toil  of  millions  are 
boldly  stolen  to  build  up  colossal  fortunes  for  a  few,  unprecedented  in 
the  history  of  mankind,"  ran  the  document,  "and  the  possessors  of 
these  in  turn  despise  the  republic  and  endanger  liberty."  Govern 
mental  injustice  bred  the  "two  classes,  tramps  and  millionaires." 
Free  coinage  of  silver  was  demanded,  an  income  tax,  postal  savings 
banks,  governmental  ownership  of  railways,  telegraphs,  and  telephones, 
and  direct  election  of  United  States  Senators  by  the  people;  the  initia 
tive  and  the  referendum  were  also  indorsed.  General  Weaver,  who 
had  been  the  Greenback  candidate  in  1880,  was  the  nominee  of  the 
new  party. 

The  Republicans  had  made  a  conscious  attempt  to  check  this  wave 
of  discontent,  which  had  been  rising  for  a  number  of  years,  by  enacting 
The  the  Sherman  Anti-Trust  Law  and  the  Sherman  Silver 

Republicans.  purchase  Act,  and  by  creating  the  six  new  western  states. 
At  the  same  time  they  were  depending  on  the  McKinley  Tariff  Law  to 
prove  a  tower  of  strength  for  them  in  the  conservative  East.  They 
renominated  President  Harrison. 

The  struggle  for  the  Democratic  nomination  was  a  contest  between 
ex-President  Cleveland  and  his  opponents,  with  the  Tammany  Hall 
The  Democrats  of  New  York  City  still  arrayed  against  him. 

Democrats.  jn  1:891,  when  his  party,  in  an  effort  to  capture  the 
farmers'  vote  in  the  West,  was  showing  decided  leanings  toward  the 


PROSPERITY,  PANIC,  AND  SLOW  RECOVERY  453 

extreme  doctrine  of  free  silver,  Cleveland  boldly  came  out  against  the 
doctrine,  and  his  nomination  on  the  first  ballot  by  the  convention  of 
1892  removed  free  silver  from  a  prominent  place  as  a  campaign  issue. 
Like  that  of  1888,  the  campaign  was  fought  on  the  tariff  question  alone. 

In  the  height  of  the  campaign  a  great  strike  occurred  at  the  Carnegie 
Steel  works  at  Homestead,  near  Pittsburg,  Pennsylvania,  which  worked 
against  the  interests  of  the  Republicans  and  put  them  on    The 
the  defensive,  inasmuch  as  their  high  tariff  stand  had  won    Homestead 
for  them  the  reputation  of  being  the  champions  of  the    ' 
rich  protected  interests.     When  the  company  announced  that  it  was 
necessary  to  reduce  wages,  the  workers  refused  to  acquiesce  and  took 
possession  of  the  works.     Armed  detectives  were  hired  by  the  com 
pany,  and  in  the  ensuing  encounters  a  number  were  killed  and  wounded 
on  both  sides.     The  governor  of  the  state  was  obliged  to  call  out  the 
militia  to  restore  order. 

Cleveland   received    277    electoral   votes    and    the    election.     His 
popular  vote  was  5,556,000  against  5,175,000  for  Harrison,  1,040,000 
for  Weaver,  255,000  for  the  Prohibition  candidate,  and    Cleveland's 
21,000  for  the  candidate  of  the  Socialist  Labor  party,    second 
which  now  waged  its   first  campaign.     The   large  vote 
of  the  Populists  indicated  again  the  extent  of  the  agrarian  unrest. 
Besides  increasing  their  number  in  the  United  States  Senate  to  three 
and  in  the  House  of  Representatives  to  ten,  the  Populists,  in  fusion 
with  the  Democrats,  succeeded  in  electing  governors  in  four  Western 
States  and  in  securing  twenty-two  electoral  votes. 

FOREIGN  RELATIONS,  1877-1893 

In  the  administrations  of  Hayes,  Garfield,  Arthur,  Cleveland,  and 
Harrison,  the  nation's  foreign  policy  was  concerned  largely  with  its 
southern  neighbors.     In  the  eighties  the  French  embarked    The  French 
on  an  attempt  to  construct  a  canal  between  the  Atlantic    canal  at 
and  the  Pacific  at  Panama.     The  first  plan  formulated  by    ' 
the  United  States  for  such  a  canal  was  that  embodied  in  the  Clayton- 
Bulwer  treaty  of  1850,  which  contemplated  a  neutral  canal  under  the 
joint  control  of  the  United  States  and  Great  Britain.     The  United 
States  repented  of  this  agreement  almost  as  soon  as  it  was  made,  and 
the  experience  of  the  French  occupation  of  Mexico  in  Civil  War  days 
strengthened  the  growing  conviction  that  it  was  incompatible  with 
the  interests  of  the  United  States  to  endure  a  strong  European  nation 
as  a  near  neighbor  on  the  south.     When,  in  1880,  the  Frenchman, 
Ferdinand  de  Lesseps,  who  had  constructed  the  Suez  Canal,  appeared 
in  New  York  and  Washington  in  the  interests  of  a  French  Panama 


454  AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 

Canal,  President  Hayes  and  his  Secretary  of  State,  William  M. 
Evarts  of  New  York,  opposed  him.  The  President  declared  in  a  mes 
sage  to  Congress:  "The  policy  of  this  country  is  a  canal  under  American 
control.  The  United  States  cannot  consent  to  the  surrender  of  this 
control  to  any  European  power  or  to  any  combination  of  European 
powers." 

Congress,  however,  took  no  steps  to  thwart  the  French  undertaking. 
Secretary  Elaine,  under  President  Garfield,  took  the  same  position  as 
Secretary  Evarts  before  him,  but  he  failed  in  his  efforts  to  induce  Great 
Britain  to  give  up  the  Clayton-Bulwer  treaty  under  which  the  United 
States  was  bound  to  take  in  that  country  as  a  partner  in  the  construc 
tion  of  any  canal  between  the  two  oceans.  President  Cleveland  re 
jected  Hayes's  idea  of  a  strictly  American  canal  under  the  control  of  the 
United  States,  and  clung  to  the  old  Clayton-Bulwer  idea  of  a  neutral 
canal;  he  even  withdrew  a  -treaty  with  Nicaragua,  sent  by  President 
Arthur  to  the  Senate,  which  would  have  given  to  the  United  States 
the  right  to  build  a  canal  across  that  country. 

After  several  years  of  effort  the  French  enterprise  at  Panama  ended 
in  failure,  with  their  canal  only  two-fifths  completed  and  over  $300,000,- 
The  failure  °°°  expended.  One  hundred  French  Senators,  Deputies, 
of  the  Ministers,  and  ex-Ministers  were  accused  of  bribery  in 

connection  with  the  enterprise,  and  De  Lesseps  himself 
was  sentenced  to  imprisonment  for  five  years,  though  he  died  before 
beginning  the  sentence.  The  reasons  for  the  failure  were  various, 
among  them  being  the  exorbitant  prices  extorted  by  the  Colombians 
for  their  land,  improper  sanitation,  poor  hospitals,  extravagance  in 
purchase  of  supplies,  and  a  short-sighted  plan  of  disposing  of  the 
excavated  earth  on  the  banks  of  the  canal  itself,  whence  it  fell  back 
again  into  the  excavation.  As  an  instance  of  the  fraudulent  methods 
of  the  directors  of  the  French  company  may  be  cited  an  item,  in  their 
list  of  purchases,  of  thousands  of  snow-shovels  for  use  in  Panama.  In 
the  United  States,  zest  was  added  by  the  French  undertaking  to  the 
nation's  attempt  to  improve  transportation  facilities  between  the 
Atlantic  and  Pacific  oceans;  and  work  on  the  transcontinental  rail 
roads  was  pushed  with  vigor. 

The  international  complications  which  the  existence  of  a  French 
Canal  at  Panama  might  have  created  not  only  for  the  United  States 
Warning  to  but  ^or  ^e  South  American  states,  were  averted,  but  the 
the  United  United  States  was  warned  by  the  episode  that  European 
States.  nations  would  cultivate  closer  relations  with  the  states 

south  of  her  if  she  herself  did  not. 

In  November,  1881,  James  G.  Blaine,  as  Secretary  of  State,  in  the 


PROSPERITY,  PANIC,  AND  SLOW  RECOVERY  455 

name  of  the  President  of  the  United  States  extended  "  to  all  the  inde 
pendent  countries  of  North  and  South  America  an  earnest 
invitation  to  participate  in  a  general  Congress  to  be  held   American 


in  the  city  of  Washington,  on  the  twenty-fourth  of 
November,  1882,  for  the  purpose  of  considering  and  dis 
cussing  the  methods  of  preventing  war  between  the  nations  of  America." 
Chile  and  Peru  had  been  at  war  with  one  another  for  several  years,  and 
it  was  hoped  that  these  two  nations  might  be  brought  together  and  a 
plan  agreed  upon  for  preserving  peace  among  all  American  nations. 
The  war,  however,,  did  not  cease,  and  the  invitation  was  withdrawn. 
The  Congress  of  the  United  States  continued  to  discuss  the  plan  of  a 
Pan-American  conference,  and  in  1888,  after  the  warring  nations  of 
South  America  had  made  peace  with  one  another,  it  authorized  the 
President  to  call  another  Congress  of  the  eighteen  American  republics 
and  the  empire  of  Brazil  to  meet  in  Washington  in  1889.  Before 
settling  down  to  their  deliberations,  the  delegates,  as  guests  of  the 
nation,  visited  leading  manufacturing  and  commercial  cities  in  various 
sections  of  .the  Union,  and  then  assembled  at  the  national  capital 
to  consider  questions  of  mutual  interest.  Recommendations  were 
voted  concerning  matters  of  commerce  and  international  law,  and 
arbitration  was  indorsed  as  a  means  of  settling  international  disputes 
between  American  states.  It  was  under  the  influence  of  this  congress 
that  Secretary  Elaine  made  the  recommendations  which  the  Senate 
and  the  House  of  Representatives  enacted  into  law  as  the  reciprocity 
provisions  of  the  McKinley  Tariff  Law.  A  second  Pan-  American 
Congress  was  held  in  Mexico  in  1901-1902,  a  third  in  Rio  de  Janeiro, 
Brazil,  in  1906,  and  a  fourth  in  Buenos  Ayres,  Argentine  Republic, 
in  1910.  The  fifth  would  have  been  convened  in  1915,  but  for  the 
general  interruption  of  affairs  occasioned  by  the  breaking  out  of  war 
in  Europe.  The  idea  of  common  action  by  the  republics  of  America, 
which  had  taken  root  in  1826  during  the  administration  of  John  Quincy 
Adams  and  had  passed  through  various  vicissitudes  of  fortune,  had 
at  last  become  a  permanent  working  force. 

A  definite  achievement  of  the  Pan-American  Congress  of  1889-1890 
was  the  creation  of  the  Pan-American  Union,  which  has  since  been 
maintained  in  Washington  by  the  American  republics,    The  Pan_ 
increased  in  number  to  twenty-one  by  the  addition  of   Ainerican 
Cuba,  Panama,   and  the  new  republic  of  Brazil.     The 
object  of  the  unique  international  organization  is  the  furtherance  of 
commerce,  friendly  intercourse,  and  a  mutual  understanding.     It  is 
controlled  by  a  governing  board,  composed  of  the  Secretary  of  State 
of  the  United  States  and  the  diplomatic  representatives  in  Washington 
30 


456 


AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 


of  the  other  American  republics,  and  does  a  work  of  far-reaching  im 
portance,  carrying  on  an  extensive  correspondence  and  sending  forth 
numerous  pamphlets,  reports,  and  bulletins,  in  English,  Spanish,  and 
Portuguese,  on  matters  of  common  interest. 


PAN- AMERICAN  BUILDING,  WASHINGTON,  D.  C. 

Hardly  had  the  Pan-American  Congress  of  1889-1890  adjourned 
when  trouble  arose  with  Chile,  which  embittered  the  relations  of  the 
Trouble  United  States  with  that  country  to  the  end  of  the  Harrison 

with  Chile.  administration.  President  Harrison  was  slow  in  recogniz 
ing  the  belligerency  of  a  revolting  faction  in  Chile,  and  finally  caused 
the  indictment  of  an  agent  of  the  insurgents  who  had  bought  arms 
in  this  country  and  sent  them  back  to  Chile.  Excitement  was  intense, 
but  the  courts  decided  that  it  had  not  been  a  violation  of  the  neutrality 
laws  to  procure  the  arms  here  and  that  the  vessel,  the  Itata,  carry 
ing  them  had  not  been  fitted  out  as  a  vessel  of  war  in  our  ports,  but 
was  a  mere  transport  engaged  in  a  lawful  mission.  After  the  insurgents 
had  conquered  and  were  installed  in  power  as  the  national  government 
of  Chile,  more  bad  feeling  against  the  North  Americans  was  aroused, 
when  the  United  States  minister  accorded  temporary  asylum  in  his 
legation  building  at  Santiago  to  the  leaders  of  the  defeated  party  and 
allowed  them  to  make  their  escape.  Unwisely,  in  October,  1891,  the  cap- 


PROSPERITY,  PANIC,  AND  SLOW  RECOVERY  457 

tain  of  the  United  States  warship,  Baltimore,  gave  shore  leave  at  Val 
paraiso  to  over  one  hundred  of  his  men.  In  the  street  fighting  with 
the  citizens  which  almost  instantly  broke  out,  two  Americans  were 
killed  and  nineteen  wounded.  Chile  paid  $75,000  as  indemnity  for  the 
outrage,  but  only  time  could  assuage  the  bitterness  of  feeling  which 
temporarily  marred  the  mutual  good-fellowship  between  two  American 
republics,  which  it  had  been  one  of  the  objects  of  the  Pan-American 
Congress  to  foster. 

Trouble  with  Italy  came  in  1891  over  mob  violence  inflicted  by 
citizens  of  the  United  States  upon  subjects  of  the  King  of  Italy. 
A  series  of  outrageous  crimes  in  New  Orleans  was  Trouble 
popularly  attributed  to  an  Italian  Black-Hand  society,  with  Italy, 
known  as  the  Mafia;  the  chief  of  police  was  himself  shot  down. 
Orderly  trial  was  given  to  the  accused,  but  no  one  was  convicted;  and 
an  infuriated  mob  forced  an  entrance  into  the  jail  and  slew  several 
suspected  Italians  without  mercy.  Three  of  these  victims  were  sub 
jects  of  the  King  of  Italy,  who  promptly  demanded  of  the  government 
of  the  United  States  the  punishment  of  the  murderers  and  indemnity 
for  the  families  of  his  murdered  subjects.  This  the  United  States 
could  not  grant,  since  no  crime  had  been  committed  against  United 
States  law  and  the  matter  was  within  the  jurisdiction  of  the  State  of 
Louisiana.  Secretary  Elaine  pointed  out  to  Italy  that  the  United 
States  was  a  federal  government  in  form,  and  that  the  culprits  were 
answerable  to  the  State  of  Louisiana.  That  state  had  no  laws  for 
awarding  damages  for  loss  of  life  at  the  hands  of  a  mob,  and  therefore 
did  nothing.  The  explanation  was  not  acceptable  to  the  Italian 
government,  which  recalled  its  minister  from  Washington,  while  the 
United  States  minister  left  Rome.  Congress  found  a  way  out  of  the 
difficulty  by  voting  $25,000  to  the  families  of  the  victims,  not  as  a 
recognition  of  damage  claims  but  as  an  expression  of  regret,  and  the 
matter  was  settled. 

Again,  as  in  the  Caroline  affair  which  arose  out  of  the  rebellion  in 
Canada  in  1837,  the  weakness  of  the  federal  form  of  government  in 

foreign  affairs  was  demonstrated.     The  central  govern- 

T  T  ,  ,  ,  -  ,,  f  .-,  .,.  ,  A  weakness 
ment  stands  helpless  before  the  power  of  the  citizens  of  a  Of  the  Fed- 
state  or  of  the  state  itself  to  do  mischief  in  foreign  re-  eral  form  °? 

.        .  government, 
lations  and  even  to  embroil  the  nation  in  war. 

In  1878-1879  the  King  of  the  Samoan  Islands  concluded  treaties 
with  the  United  States,  Great  Britain,  and  Germany,  by  which  these 
three  powers  recognized  the  independence  of  the  islands.  Within  five 
years  a  native  insurrection  broke  out.  The  situation  was  precarious, 
for  in  Samoa  the  Germans  were  without  reason  assuming  that  they 


458  AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 

were  in  control.  After  some  hesitation  Germany  declared  war  on  the 
Affairs  in  the  native  government,  dethroned  and  deported  King  Malietoa, 
Pacific.  and  installed  another  in  his  place,  with  a  German  as  ad- 

viser'  Indignation  was  widespread  in  the  United  States 
over  these  acts,  Congress  made  a  large  appropriation  to 
safeguard  American  interests,  and  President  Cleveland  sent  a  small 
squadron  to  Samoa.  The  danger  of  war  was  averted  by  a  great  storm 
at  sea,  which  destroyed  all  but  one  of  the  war  vessels  of  the  various 
nations  in  Samoan  waters.  A  conference  of  the  three  powers  was  there 
upon  held  in  Berlin,  and  their  joint  protectorate  over  the  island  con 
tinued.  In  1899,  by  a  new  agreement,  Great  Britain  withdrew  entirely 
from  the  islands,  Germany  received  Upola  and  other  small  islands  of 
the  Samoan  group,  and  the  United  States  Tutuila  and  a  few  other 
small  islands,  valuable  chiefly  as  coaling  stations  for  the  navy. 

A  long-standing  dispute  with  Great  Britain  over  the  control  of  the 
Bering  Sea  and  its  seal  fisheries  came  to  a  head  during  Harrison's 
2  The  al  administration.  Inasmuch  as  Russia  before  1867  claimed 
fisheries  in  exclusive  rights  in  this  sea  between  Siberia  and  Alaska, 
SeaBering  t^ie  United  States  upon  acquiring  Alaska  claimed  the  same 
rights.  She  was  the  more  insistent  upon  exercising  this 
control  because  of  the  danger  that  the  seals  would  soon  be  exterminated 
under  unrestricted  fishing.  Her  own  seal  fishermen  were  limited  to  a 
certain  number  of  seals,  while  the  fishermen  of  other  nations  were 
slaying  without  hindrance.  Perceiving  that  this  claim  of  the  United 
States,  if  allowed,  would  shut  out  her  vessels  from  the  seal  fisheries 
in  the  Alaskan  waters,  Great  Britain  took  the  ground  that  the  United 
States  could  exercise  jurisdiction  only  for  three  miles  from  the  shore, 
the  accepted  limit  of  national  boundaries  upon  the  sea.  The  Secretary 
of  State  pushed  the  claims  of  his  country  in  somewhat  dictatorial  fash 
ion  and  procured  the  arrest  of  several  encroaching  British  vessels.  By 
the  award  of  arbitration  which  happily  settled  the  matter  in  1893,  the 
United  States  was  compelled  to  pay  damages  to  Great  Britain.  The 
Bering  Sea,  beyond  the  three-mile  limit,  was  declared  to  be  not  mare 
clausum,  closed  sea,  but  open  sea,  where  the  ships  of  all  nations  might 
hunt  the  seals  with  equal  right.  After  the  award  in  the  matter  of  the 
Alabama  claims,  this  was  the  next  great  victory  for  arbitration  in  the 
history  of  the  country,  a  signal  demonstration  of  the  devotion  of 
the  United  States  to  the  principle  of  pacific  settlement  of  international 
disputes.  In  1911  the  United  States,  Great  Britain,  Japan,  and  Russia 
bound  themselves  by  a  treaty  to  work  in  harmony  for  the  protection  of 
the  fur-seal  herds  of  the  entire  North  Pacific. 

There  had  been  a  handful  of  American  inhabitants  in  the  Hawaiian 


PROSPERITY,  PANIC,  AND  SLOW  RECOVERY  459 

Islands  in  the  Pacific  for  over  fifty  years,  when  in  1893,  much  after 

the  fashion  of  the  Americans  in  Texas  .in  the  thirties,  these 

^  T  ,3.  Revolution 

settlers  rose  up  against  the  native  monarchy,   deposed    inthe 

Queen  Liliuokalani,  set  up  a  provisional  government  of  Hawaiian 
their  own,  and  with  the  approval  of  the  resident  United 
States  minister  declared  themselves  a  protectorate  of  the  United 
States.  President  Harrison,  at  the  very  end  of  whose  administration 
these  events  took  place,  proved  friendly  to  the  new  government  and 
sent  a  treaty  to  the  United  States  Senate,  providing  for  the  annexation 
of  Hawaii  to  the  United  States.  The  treaty  was  still  pending  in  the 
Senate  when  President  Harrison  gave  place  to  his  successor,  Grover 
Cleveland,  who  assumed  the  reins  of  government  a  second  time.  Per 
ceiving  that  the  nation  was  on  the  point  of  embarking  upon  the  untried 
experiment  of  territorial  expansion  into  new  lands  beyond  the  conti 
nental  limits  of  America,  the  new  President  boldly  withdrew  the  un- 
ratified  treaty  from  the  Senate  and  successfully  put  a  stop  to  the 
movement  for  the  time  being. 

CLEVELAND'S   STORMY  SECOND  ADMINISTRATION 

The  second  administration  of  Grover  Cleveland,  like  his  first  one,  was 
a  time  of  storm  and  stress,  but  from  an  entirely  different  set  of  causes. 
In  his  first  administration  the  disturbing  element  had  been  The  finan  ial 
the  revolt  of  the  farming  and  industrial  classes  against  panic  of 
the  tyranny  of  capital;  now  it  was  the  distress  of  capital 
and  labor  alike  in  a  time  of  adversity.  A  few  weeks  after  the  in 
auguration  of  President  Cleveland  prosperity  gave  way  to  the  most 
serious  financial  panic  since  that  of  1837.  The  first  signal  of  dis 
tress  came  early  in  1893  before  Cleveland  was  sworn  into  office,  when 
the  Philadelphia  and  Reading  Railroad  Company,  with  a  capital  of 
$40,000,000  and  a  debt  of  $125,000,000,  went  into  bankruptcy.  On 
May  5  the  National  Cordage  Company,  with  a  capital  of  $20,000,000 
and  liabilities  of  $10,000,000,  the  stock  of  which  had  been  selling  on 
the  New  York  market  at  147,  went  to  the  wall.  Cordage  stock  fell  to 
10,  and  with  it  the  whole  stock  market  collapsed.  In  the  course  of 
the  year  158  national  banks,  situated  generally  in  the  South  and  West, 
failed,  172  state  banks  went  down,  177  private  banks,  47  savings  banks, 
13  loan  and  trust  companies,  and  6  mortgage  companies.  A  billion 
dollars'  worth  of  railroad  property  fell  into  the  hands  of  receivers, 
thousands  of  factories  were  shut  down  and  many  worked  on  part  time 
only.  There  were  three  times  as  many  commercial  failures  as  in  1873. 
While  the  blow  was  especially  heavy  in  the  West  and  South,  the 
results  were  serious  in  the  whole  country,  and  furnished  a  background 


460  AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 

of  economic  distress  and  hard  times  for  the  events  of  Grover  Cleveland's 
second  administration. 

One  of  the  causes  of  the  panic  was  the  excessive  speculation  that 
is  wont  to  accompany  prosperity  and  had  figured  as  a  factor  in  pre- 
The  problem  ceding  panics.  In  addition,  the  uncertainty  of  business 
of  the  gold  men  as  to  what  the  Democrats  would  do  with  the  tariff 
led  to  unsettled  conditions.  Another  disturbing  cause,  in 
the  view  of  President  Cleveland  and  many  others,  was  the  decrease 
in  the  gold  reserve  in  the  treasury  at  Washington.  This  fund,  always 
above  $100,000,000,  and  in  1891  amounting  to  $300,000,000,  was 
intended  to  inspire  confidence  among  the  people  in  the  $346,000,000 
worth  of  greenbacks  in  circulation.  At  first  the  credit  of  the  govern 
ment  was  good  in  the  crisis,  while  that  of  hundreds  of  private  business 
institutions  was  shattered  or  at  least  suspected;  but  in  the  prevailing 
lack  of  business  confidence  induced  by  the  panic,  men  began  to  prefer 
gold  to  the  government's  paper  promises  to  pay,  and  were  taking  the 
greenbacks  to  the  treasury  for  redemption  in  greater  amounts  than 
usual.  This  privilege  of  exchanging  the  greenbacks  for  gold  at  any 
time  was  a  wise  one,  in  that  it  secured  the  circulation  of  these  notes  as 
money  without  fluctuation  of  value,  but  it  was  a  practice  that  proved 
exceedingly  inconvenient  to  the  government  when  exercised  by  the  peo 
ple  too  extensively  at  one  time.  When  the  reserve  began  to  fall  below 
the  $100,000,000  mark  in  1893,  apprehension  was  expressed  for  the 
government's  credit,  and  when  the  falling  reserve  reached  $95,000,000, 
fears  were  widespread  that  the  greenbacks  would  soon  begin  to  depre 
ciate,  as  in  the  days  of  the  Civil  War  when  tfyere  was  no  reserve  at  all. 
Plainly  the  danger  point  was  reached,  for  if  the  reserve  should  go  much 
lower  the  credit  of  the  government  would  certainly  become  impaired, 
and  such  a  result  would  plunge  the  business  world  into  deeper  despair. 

President  Cleveland  reached  the  conclusion  that  partial  relief  from 
the  decline  in  the  gold  reserve  would  be  secured  if  Congress  should 
Repeal  of  repeal  the  Sherman  Silver  Purchase  Act,  which  would 
the  Sherman  put  a  stop  to  the  issue  of  any  more  treasury  notes. 
Purchase  Congress  was  called  in  special  session  in  the  midst  of  the 
Act-  panic,  and  after  a  battle  of  two  months,  was  forced  by  the 

President  to  follow  his  recommendations  and  stop  the  purchase  of  sil 
ver.  The  anger  of  the  friends  of  silver  both  within  and  without  the 
Populist  party,  for  whom  the  law  was  passed  in  the  first  place,  knew 
no  bounds. 

While  the  panic  was  at  its  height  and  while  the  President  and  Con 
gress  were  wrangling  over  the  Silver  Purchase  Act,  the  people  turned 
aside  from  financial  troubles  to  celebrate  the  four  hundredth  anni- 


PROSPERITY,  PANIC,  AND   SLOW  RECOVERY  461 

versary  of  the  discovery  of  America  in  a  great  world's  fair  in  Chicago, 
for  which  preparations  had  been  in  progress  for  four  years.  The  world>s 
Since  the  buildings  were  not  ready  in  1892,  the  fair  was 
postponed  till  the  next  year,  when  it  was  opened  on  the 
first  of  May  in  the  presence  of  President  Cleveland,  the  Duke  of 
Veragua,  who  was  a  lineal  descendant  of  Columbus,  and  an  enormous 
concourse  of  people.  Stretched  along  the  lake  front  in  imposing 
array  were  beautiful  buildings  for  the  display  of  the  products  of  agri 
culture,  art,  commerce,  manufacturing,  transportation,  and  every  other 
branch  of  human  activity.  The  various  states  of  the  Union,  as  well  as 
the  United  States  and  many  foreign  governments,  erected  separate 
buildings.  On  one  day,  called  Chicago  Day,  716,000  people  paid  their 
way  into  the  grounds.  In  spite  of  the  disturbed  conditions  of  the 
times,  the  number  of  visitors  from  May  to  October  reached  27,500,000. 

At  the  next  regular  session  of  Congress,  beginning  in  December,  1893, 
the  Democrats  proceeded  to  revise  the  tariff  according  to  the  President's 
well-known  ideas  of  what  a  just  tariff  should  be.  The  The  tarfff 
Democrats  entertained  great  hopes  for  lower  tariff  rates, 
inasmuch  as  they  were  in  control  of  both  houses  of  Congress  and  of  the 
presidency  for  the  first  time  since  the  Civil  War;  but  the  Senate, 
though  Democratic,  proved  to  have  in  it  protectionist  Democrats. 
Some  of  the  President's  friends,  foreseeing  the  stormy  times  ahead, 
had  counseled  him  at  the  very  outset  of  his  administration  to  deal  first 
with  the  tariff,  which  was  a  subject  on  which  his  party  could  best  unite, 
and  then  to  take  up  later  the  financial  situation  on  which  the  party  was 
sure  to  split  into  factions.  Cleveland  rejected  the  advice  and  suffered 
for  his  decision. 

The  tariff  bill  of  the  Democrats  was 'introduced  in  the  House  of 
Representatives  by  the  chairman  of  the  Committee  on  Ways  and 
Means,  William  L.  Wilson  of  West  Virginia.  It  provided  The  Wilson 
for  free  trade  in  certain  articles,  such  as  sugar,  iron  ore,  Tariff  Act. 
woo),  lumber,  and  coal,  and  for  lowered  rates  on  many  other  articles. 
After  passing  the  House  of  Representatives  the  bill  went  to  the  Senate, 
where  it  was  so  loaded  down  with  amendments  that  the  original  bill 
could  scarcely  be  recognized.  During  the  discussion  that  followed, 
the  President  wrote  a  letter  to  Chairman  Wilson  in  which  he  stigmatized 
the  bill,  as  amended  in  the  Senate,  as  a  record  of  "party  perfidy  and 
dishonor,"  and  allowed  the  letter  to  be  read  before  the  House  of 
Representatives.  The  House,  however,  in  spite  of  the  President's 
disapproval,  meekly  surrendered  to  the  Senate  and  accepted  the 
changes.  Of  the  important  raw  materials  only  wool  was  left  on  the 
free  list.  The  President  by  not  returning  the  bill  to  Congress  within 


462  AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 

ten  days  allowed  it  to  become  a  law,  although  he  showed  his  contempt 
for  it  by  not  affixing  to  it  his  official  signature. 

A  concession  to  the  radicals  of  all  sections  was  the  clause  in  the 
new  law  laying  a  tax  of  two  per  cent  on  incomes  exceeding  $4000. 
The  income  In  view  of  the  fact  that  the  demand  of  the  radicals  was 
tax*  for  a  tax  on  all  incomes,  graduated  according  to  their 

size,  the  concession  was  not  a  great  one,  for  only  a  small  proportion  of 
the  entire  population  enjoyed  an  income  of  $4000  or  more. 

After  a  winter  of  suffering  in  1893-1894,  when  the  evil  of  unem 
ployment  was  probably  more  widespread  than  ever  before,  groups  of 
Coxey's  the  unemployed  roving  over  the  country  collected  them- 

Army-  selves  together  in  the  "Army  of  the  Commonweal  of 

Christ,"  and  under  the  leadership  of  the  fanatical  " General"  Coxey, 
set  out  in  the  spring  to  march  to  Washington  to  lay  their  demands 
before  Congress.  Their  panacea  for  the  ills  of  the  country  was  an 
immediate  issue  by  the  government  of  $500,000,000  in  greenbacks. 
Hundreds  started  on  the  crusade  in  eastern  Ohio  and  hundreds  more 
joined  it  on  its  way,  but  before  the  goal  was  reached  desertions  set  in 
and  only  three  hundred  arrived  at  the  Capitol  in  Washington,  where 
their  leaders  were  arrested  by  the  Capitol  police  for  "walking  on  the 
grass."  Thoughtful  people,  however,  saw  not  merely  the  absurdity 
of  the  movement  but  the  symptoms  of  popular  distress  back  of  it. 

The  familiar  strike  again  appeared,  and  again  Chicago  was  the 
scene  of  a  deplorable  struggle.  The  Pullman  Palace  Car  Company, 
The  Pullman  *n  t^ie  suburban  town  of  Pullman,  dismissed  some  of  its 
strike  in  men  in  the  spring  of  1894  on  account  of  lack  of  work  and 

lowered  the  wages  of  others,  whereupon  the  entire  four 
thousand  employees  went  out  on  a  strike,  and  in  sympathy  the  150,000 
members  of  the  American  Railway  Union  refused  to  handle  a  single 
Pullman  car.  Practically  every  railroad  entering  Chicago  came  to  a 
standstill.  Riots,  destruction  of  property,  and  obstruction  of  the 
United  States  mails  followed,  till  United  States  troops  were  called  out 
to  protect  the  mails.  The  strikers  lost.  By  his  act  of  sending  the 
troops  of  the  regular  army  to  the  scene  to  protect  the  mails  against 
the  strikers,  the  President  called  forth  the  indignation  of  the  friends  of 
labor;  but  in  such  a  crisis,  when  law  and  order  were  at  stake,  Cleveland, 
like  President  Hayes  in  the  similar  crisis  of  1877,  was  not  a  man  to  be 
moved  by  popular  clamor. 

In  addition  to  the  use  of  the  troops  of  the  United  States  to  put 
down  the  strike,  labor  found  another  grievance  in  the  management  of 
the  situation  by  the  Federal  authorities.  The  United  States  district 
court  of  Illinois  issued  a  so-called  "blanket  injunction,"  commanding 


PROSPERITY,  PANIC,  AND   SLOW  RECOVERY  463 

the  members  of  the  American  Railway  Union  and  "all  other  persons" 
to   desist  from  obstructing  the   mails.     The   order   was    injuncti0ns 
issued  in  accordance  with  an  old  custom  of  the  courts,    against  the 
The  strikers  were  not  informed  beforehand  that  the  judge 
had  been  applied  to,  their  side  of  the  case  was  not  presented  to  him 
in  any  way,  no  witnesses  were  examined,  and  there  was  no  jury.     All 
this  appeared  arbitrary  in  the  extreme,  and  incensed  labor  cried  out  as 
one  man  against  the  court  in  denunciation  of  its  unfair  and  un-Ameri 
can  methods.     Eugene  V.  Debs,  the  leader  of  the  Railway  Union,  who 
was  arrested  for  disobedience  to  the  injunction,  was  sentenced  to  serve 
six  months  in  jail;  and  in  May  of  the  next  year,  1895,  the  Supreme 
Court  of  the  United  States  upheld  the  justice  of  the  sentence. 

Inasmuch  as  only  one  week  before  its  decision  in  the  Debs  case,  the 
Supreme  Court  had  declared  the  income  tax  feature  of  the  Wilson 
tariff   law   unconstitutional,   the    distressed    agricultural    popular 
and  industrial  classes  felt  that  this  highest  tribunal  of  the    clamor 
land  was  indeed  arrayed  in  defense  of  the  rich  against  the    Supreme 
poor;  and  just  such  a  storm  of  criticism  was  directed    Court' 
against  the  court  as  it  encountered  in  the  time  of  Chief  Justice  Taney 
after  the  announcement  of  the  Dred  Scott  Decision. 

Meanwhile,  in  spite  of  the  repeal  of  the  Sherman  Silver  Purchase 
Law,  the  problem  of  the  falling  gold  reserve  in  the  treasury  was  more 
pressing  than  ever.  When  the  $70,000,000  mark  was  The  bond 
reached  in  January,  1894,  the  administration  sold  $50,-  issues  by 
000,000  worth  of  gold  bonds  and  put  the  gold  received 
into  the  treasury,  in  the  desperate  hope  of  restoring  the 
reserve,  To  secure  the  gold  necessary  to  buy  the  bonds  many  drew 
it  out  of  the  treasury  by  presenting  more  greenbacks  there  for  redemp 
tion,  so  that  by  an  endless  chain  $24,000,000  was  transferred  from  the 
treasury  to  the  subscribers  of  the  bonds  and  by  them  back  into  the 
treasury.  In  November  of  1894,  when  the  reserve  was  down  to  $52,- 
000,000,  another  issue  of  $50,000,000  gold  bonds  was  made;  but  in 
January,  1895,  when  the  reserve  fell  to  $41,000,000,  instead  of  calling  a 
third  time  upon  the  public,  the  President  secured  $100,000,000  in  gold 
by  a  secret  contract  with  a  firm  of  bankers  in  New  York,  headed  by 
J.  Pierpont  Morgan. 

Vials  of  popular  wrath  were  poured  out  upon  the  head  of  the  Presi 
dent  for  the  transaction,  both  because  he  had  acted  in  se 
cret  and  because  he  had  allowed  the  bankers  to  buy  the 
bonds  more  cheaply  than  the  people  had  been  buying  them. 
They  charged  that  the  President  of  the  United  States 
had  proved  himself  a  friend  of  the  bankers  rather  than  of  the  masses, 


464  AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 

and  that  the  secret  bond  sales  were  illegal.  The  relief  secured  was  only 
temporary,  and  before  the  end  of  the  President's  term  another  loan  of 
$100,000,000  was  added  to  the  treasury,  this  time  by  a  general  sale  of 
the  bonds  in  which  special  effort  was  made  to  induce  the  people  of  every 
section  to  come  forward  and  lend  their  money  to  the  government. 

There  was  hardly  a  single  popular  measure  of  internal  administra 
tion  in  Cleveland's  second  presidential  term.  His  own  executive  acts 
General  un-  were  unP°Pular>  tne  laws  of  Congress  found  little  favor, 
popularity  of  and  the  Supreme  Court  offended  the  people  by  its  declara- 
tion  of  the  ^constitutionality  of  the  income  tax  and  its 
affirmation  of  the  justice  of  the  sentence  of  Debs  for  dis 
obedience  to  the  "blanket  injunction."  Financial  depression  con 
tinued  to  the  end  of  the  administration,  and  the  country  entered 
another  presidential  campaign  in  a  discontented  mood.  The  suffering 
and  discontent  of  the  farming  and  industrial  classes  were  at  their 
height.  In  such  a  condition  of  affairs  it  could  not  be  expected  that  the 
radicals  in  the  Democratic  party,  whose  numbers  had  been  increasing 
in  the  last  four  years,  would  repeat  their  graceful  acceptance  of  1892 
of  a  candidate  opposed  to  their  demands. 

THE  PRESIDENTIAL  CAMPAIGN  OF   1896 

Up  to  the  meeting  of  the  Republican  national  convention  in  1896, 
which  was  the  first  of  the  great  party  conventions  of  the  year  to  assem- 

The  Re  ^C)  ^  was  not  P^am  wnetner  this  party  would  declare 

publican  plat-  for  or  against  free  silver,  which  was  the  leading  demand 
norSnatfon  °^  t^ie  rac^cal  classes.  The  partial  surrender  of  the 
Republicans  to  the  advocates  of  Free  Silver  in  the  Sherman 
Silver  Purchase  Act  of  1890  afforded  some  ground  for  the  expectation 
that  the  Republican  party  might  now  accept  the  radical  demand  in  its 
entirety.  That  some  of  the  Republicans  at  least  contemplated  such  a 
step  was  indicated  by  the  refusal  of  William  McKinley  of  Ohio,  a  can 
didate  for  the  presidential  nomination,  to  commit  himself  for  or  against 
the  proposition  in  advance  of  the  action  of  the  convention.  The 
delegates  waged  a  bitter  struggle  on  the  subject  and  finally  decided  in 
favor  of  the  gold  standard  of  value,  although  they  made  the  concession 
that  they  would  accept  silver  also  as  a  standard  on  the  basis  of  "  inter 
national  bimetallism,"  that  is,  if  the  leading  nations  of  the  world 
would  cooperate  with  the  United  States  in  accepting  the  double  stand 
ard  of  value  of  gold  and  silver  under  conditions  to  be  agreed  upon.  The 
convention  gave  the  nomination  to  McKinley  over  his  leading  rival, 
ex-Speaker  Thomas  B.  Reed  of  Maine. 

In  the  national  convention  of  the  Democrats  the  conservative 


PROSPERITY,  PANIC,   AND  SLOW  RECOVERY  465 

element,  which  stood  behind  President  Cleveland  against  free  silver, 
was  overwhelmed  at  the  very  outset.  The  customary  The 
approval  of  the  administration  of  their  own  President  was  Democratic 
refused  by  the  convention  in  its  action  striking  from  the 
platform  the  following  words,  "We  commend  the  honesty,  economy, 
courage,  and  fidelity  of  the  present  Democratic  administration." 
Before  the  final  vote  was  taken  regarding  the  platform,  William  Jen 
nings  Bryan  of  Nebraska  swept  the  convention  off  its  feet  by  a  masterly 
speech  in  favor  of  free  silver  and  radicalism  in  general.  The  orator's 
voice  held  the  audience  spellbound.  "  Mr.  Carlisle  said  in  1878  that 
this  was  a  struggle  between  '  the  idle  holders  of  idle  capital '  and  '  the 
struggling  masses  who  produce  the  wealth  and  pay  the  taxes  of  the 
country';  and,  my  friends,  it  is  simply  a  question  that  we  shall  decide 
upon  which  side  shall  the  Democratic  party  fight.  Upon  the  side  of '  the 
idle  holders  of  idle  capital,'  or  upon  the  side  of  '  the  struggling  masses? ' 
.  .  .  The  sympathies  of  the  Democratic  party,  as  shown  by  the  plat 
form,  are  on  the  side  of  the  struggling  masses,  who  have  ever  been 
the  foundation  of  the  Democratic  party. 

"There  are  two  ideas  of  government.  There  are  those  who  believe 
that  if  you  will  only  legislate  to  make  the  well-to-do  prosperous,  their 
prosperity  will  leak  through  on  those  below.  The  Democratic  idea, 
however,  has  been  that  if  you  legislate  to  make  the  masses  prosperous, 
their  prosperity  will  find  its  way  up  through  every  class  that  rests  upon 
them.  .  .  .  You  come  to  us  and  tell  us  that  the  great  cities  are  in  favor 
of  the  gold  standard.  I  tell  you  that  the  great  cities  rest  upon  our 
broad  and  fertile  prairies.  Burn  down  your  cities  and  leave  our  farms, 
and  your  cities  will  spring  up  again  as  if  by  magic.  But  destroy  our 
farms  and  grass  will  grow  in  the  streets  of  every  city  in  this  country. 
.  .  .  Having  behind  us  the  commercial  interests  and  all  the  toiling 
masses,  we  shall  answer  their  demands  for  a  gold  standard  by  saying 
to  them,  you  shall  not  press  down  upon  the  brow  of  labor  this  crown 
of  thorns.  You  shall  not  crucify  mankind  upon  a  cross  of  gold." 

The  movement  which  reached  its  culmination  in  this  speech  had  its 
inception  in  the  marked  inequalities  of  fortune  and  economic  opportu 
nity  which  arose  in  the  days  of  the  Civil  War  and  after 
that  date;  but  no  spokesman  of  the  movement  had  com-    nation  of  " 
manded  the  attention  of  the  entire  nation  as  did  the  young    political 

.  ...  discontent. 

Nebraskan  lawyer,  in  the  Democratic  convention  of  1896. 

Amid  wild  enthusiasm  the  platform  advocated  by  Bryan  was 
adopted.  It  called  for  the  free  coinage  of  silver  at  the  ratio  of  sixteen 
ounces  of  silver  to  one  of  gold,  condemned  the  recent  bond  issues 
of  the  national  government  in  time  of  peace,  and  denounced  the  in- 


466  AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 

come  tax  decision  of  the  Supreme  Court  and  the  issue  of  injunctions 
The  Demo-  ^y  the  federal  courts.  In  its  various  planks  it  virtually 
cratic  plat-  embraced  the  third  party  movements  of  the  past  quarter 
of  a  century,  and  met  the  demands  of  the  Greenbackers, 
the  Patrons  of  Husbandry,  the  Farmers  Alliance,  and  the  Populists; 
the  Labor  Reformers,  the  Knights  of  Labor,  the  American  Federation 
of  Labor,  the  Union  Labor  party,  and  the  United  Labor  party;  to  a 
certain  extent  even  of  the  Socialist  Labor  party. 

On  the  day  after  the  adoption  of  the  platform,  Bryan  himself,  who 

was  a  dark  horse,  was  placed  at  the  head  of  the  ticket,  having  won  the 

The  honor  by  a  single  speech.     He  had  served  two  terms  in 

Democratic       the  House  of  Representatives,  where  he  was  known  as  an 

on'      orator,  though  with  a  reputation  far  from  national. 

So  far  as  candidates  were  concerned,  the  contest  lay  between 
McKinley  and  Bryan.  The  latter  was  indorsed  by  thirty-four  seceding 
The  other  delegates  from  the  Republican  convention,  who  formed 
parties.  ^he  National  Silver  party,  by  a  seceding  wing  of  the 

Prohibition  party,  and  by  the  more  important  Populist  party.  The 
jocular  remark  was  made  that  the  Populists  had  captured  the  Demo 
cratic  party.  The  Socialist  Labor  party  did  not  join  the  others  in 
indorsing  Bryan,  but  put  forward  their  own  candidate. 

The  Gold  Democratic  party,  made  up  of  seceders  from  the  Democratic 
party,  nominated  John  M.  Palmer  of  Illinois  as  their  candidate,  but  on  elec 
tion  day  the  members  of  this  party  cast  most  of  their  votes  for  McKinley. 

Free  coinage  of  silver  meant  the  free  coinage  at  the  government 
mints  of  all  the  silver  presented  there  at  the  arbitrary  ratio  of  sixteen 
The  ounces  of  silver  to  one  of  gold,  although  in  the  open  market 

meaning  of  it  took  about  thirty-two  ounces  of  silver  to  equal  in  value 
one  ounce  of  gold.  The  silver  coined  was  to  be  legal 
tender,  that  is,  lawful  money  for  the  payment  of  all  debts.  To  coin 
silver  at  the  proposed  ratio,  the  government  would  be  obliged  to  coin 
37 1 J  grains  of  silver,  then  worth  about  fifty- two  cents,  and  to  stamp  it 
as  one  dollar.  The  chief  argument  for  the  proposition  was  that  the 
quantity  of  gold  in  the  world  was  not  large  enough  to  furnish  a  suf 
ficient  supply  of  money,  and  that  the  free  coinage  of  silver  would  put 
into  circulation  the  requisite  amount  of  money  and  relieve  distress. 

The  Republicans  predicted  that  the  unlimited  coinage  of  silver 
TheRepubli-  would  inflate  the  currency  just  as  had  the  greenbacks, 
aga\nsffreentS  and  like  the  greenbacks  would  drive  the  more  valuable 
silver.  gold  from  circulation,  cause  a  rapid  increase  of  prices,  and 

foster  speculation. 

Despite  Bryan's  appeal  to  the  "  masses  against  the  classes,"  the 


PROSPERITY,  PANIC,  AND  SLOW  RECOVERY 


467 


The  tariff. 


Republicans  did  not  neglect  to  urge  a  protective  tariff  as  a  cure  for 
the  hard  times.  Thousands  of  large  posters  were  circu 
lated  bearing  a  portrait  of  McKinley  with  the  inscription, 
" The  Advance  Agent  of  Prosperity,"  Another  poster,  bearing  the 
title,  "The  Real  Issue,"  showed  McKinley  addressing  laborers  in  front 
of  a  factory  and  declaring  that  it  was  better  to  open  the  factories  than 
the  mints,  while  Bryan  was  pictured  in  front  of  the  United  States  mint, 
inviting  the  people  of  all  the  world  to  bring  in  their  silver  for  free 
coinage.  The  platform  of  the  Republicans,  it  was  alleged,  stood  for 
"an  honest  dollar  and  the  chance  to  earn  it." 

In  no  previous  presidential  contest  had  there  been  such  an  extensive 
campaign  of  education.     By  means  of  their  enormous  campaign  fund, 
which  has  been  estimated  to  have  been  as  great  as  $7,000,-    A  campaign 
ooo,  the  Republicans,  under  the  direction  of  the  chairman    of  education, 
of  the  Republican  National  Com 
mittee,  Marcus  A.  Hanna,  issued 
over  200,000,000  copies  of  docu 
ments,   sent  forth  thousands   of 
speakers  to  harangue  the  people, 
and  supplied  hundreds  of  news 
papers    with   specially  prepared 
matter.    The  Democrats  followed 
the  same   methods,   though    the 
scope    of    their    operations    was 
limited  by  their  smaller  campaign 
fund.     McKinley    himself     con 
ducted  a  "  front  porch  "  campaign     ^ 
at  his  home    in    Canton,   Ohio, 
while  Bryan  traveled  18,000  miles 
and  delivered  approximately  600 
speeches  to  5,000,000  auditors. 

On  election  day  McKinley  re 
ceived  7,100,000  popular  votes  to 
6,500,000  for  Bryan,  and  there 
was  a  much  smaller  vote  for  the 
Gold  Democrats,  the  two  wings  of 

the  Prohibitionists,  and  the  Socialist  Labor  party.    The 
electoral  vote  stood  271  for  McKinley  to  176  for  Bryan. 


WILLIAM  MC-KINLEY 


The  result. 


GRADUAL  RECOVERY  OF  BUSINESS 

Two  events  of  the  first  year  of  McKinley's  administration  placed 
the  business  affairs  of  the  country  on  a  new  basis  and  brought  about  the 


468  AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 

gradual  dissolution  of  the  organized  forces  of  economic  discontent  which 
The  Dingley  ^a<^  ram'ed  to  the  standard  of  Bryan.  First,  in  fulfillment 
Tariff  Law  of  their  platform  promises,  the  Republican  leaders  put 
through  Congress  the  Dingley  Tariff  Law,  named  for 
Nelson  A.  Dingley  of  Maine,  Chairman  of  the  House  Committee  on 
Ways  and  Means  which  framed  the  bill.  The  new  act  restored  the 
rates  of  the  McKinley  Act  of  1890  and  in  some  instances  even  went 
beyond  that  act  as  a  high  protective  measure.  The  duty  on  raw  wool 
was  reinstated,  but  as  a  concession  to  free  trade  sentiment  the  principle 
of  reciprocity  was  again  indorsed.  The  almost  constant  tariff  agitation 
of  the  previous  fifteen  years  now  gradually  subsided.  The  new  law 
remained  on  the  statute  books  unchanged  for  twelve  years,  during 
which  time  the  country  passed  through  a  period  of  prosperity. 

The  second  event  of  far-reaching  importance  in  the  business  world 
was  the  sudden  increase  in  the  supply  of  gold.  While  Congress  was  busy 
Gold  disco  w^h  the  Dingley  Tariff  Act,  the  country  was  thrown  into 
cries  on  the  the  greatest  mining  excitement  since  the  early  days  of  the 
River  in°  Comstock  Lode  in  Nevada  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century 
Canada,  before,  by  the  news  that  in  less  than  a  week's  time  two 

boundary  steamers  had  arrived  at  San  Francisco  from  Alaska,  one 
line  from  bearing  forty  miners  and  $500,000  in  gold  and  the  other 
sixty-eight  miners  and  $1,250,000  in  gold.  The  new  dis 
coveries  proved  to  be  in  a  remote  region  on  the  Klondike  River,  a  tribu 
tary  of  the  Yukon,  over  the  boundary  line  from  Alaska  in  the  Dominion 
of  Canada.  Notwithstanding  the  difficulties,  thousands  made  their 
way  to  the  new  mines,  and  in  twelve  years  secured  $125,000,000  worth 
of  treasure,  though  this  rich  return  was  far  below  the  $500,000,000  pro- 
duqed  in  the  first  twelve  years  of  their  history  by  the  mines  of  California. 
The  next  year  there  was  the  same  excitement  over  again,  and  again  a 
rush  of  fortune  seekers  at  the  announcement  that  gold  had  been  dis 
covered  at  Cape  Nome  on  the  southern  part  of  the  western 
coveries  on  peninsula  of  Alaska  bordering  on  the  Bering  Sea.  These 
mmes  did  not  prove  to  be  as  rich  as  those  of  the  Klondike, 
producing  in  ten  years  only $50, 000,000;  but  in  conjunction 
with  the  latter  they  led  to  further  discoveries,  and  from  1906  to  1910  over 
$100,000,000  worth  of  gold  was  taken  from  the  Alaskan  mines  alone. 
The  rapid  extension  of  the  gold  mining  industry  in  Canada  and 
Alaska  was  coincident  with  a  similar  development  in  other  countries,  all 
World-wide  °^  wm'cn  together  produced  $254,000,000  worth  of  gold 
increase  in  in  1900,  $402,000,000  in  1906,  and  $466,000,000  in  1912. 
gold  production. ^ewjv  diSCOvered  mines,  improved  machinery,  and  im- 
Droved  processes  of  treating  ores  were  all  factors  in  the  wonderful  output. 


PROSPERITY,  PANIC,  AND  SLOW  RECOVERY  469 

Such  a  prodigal  supply  of  gold,  thrust  into  the  markets  so  soon  after 
the  Democratic  argument  in  1896  that  the  gold  supply  was  too  small 
to  furnish  a  basis  for  the  currency  of  the  civilized  world,  The  Gold 
destroyed  the  main  argument  of  the  champions  of  free  Standard^ 
silver  and  removed  that  issue  from  the  realm  of  practical 
politics.  Heavy  exports  of  food  supplies  also  brought  vast  sums  of 
gold  into  the  United  States  and  thus  increased  the  amount  of  gold 
within  the  country.  The  Gold  Standard  Act  of  1900  definitely  estab 
lished  the  gold  dollar  as  the  standard  of  value  in  the  United  States 
and  enjoined  upon  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  the  duty  of  main 
taining  all  other  forms  of  money  at  a  parity  with  that  standard.  This 
official  repudiation  of  free  silver,  for  such  the  adoption  of  the  gold 
standard  amounted  to,  was  received  by  the  conservative  business 
interests  of  the  country  with  satisfaction,  as  settling,  for  this  country 
at  least,  the  vexed  problem  of  the  mutual  relations  of  gold  and  silver 
coins.  Thanks  to  the  abounding  prosperity  in  all  sections  of  the 
country,  the  expected  outcry  of  the  free  silver  interests  was  ineffective 
and  soon  ceased.  Many  economists  are  even  of  the  opinion  that 
the  plentiful  supply  of  -gold  has  now  furnished  the  world  with  too 
much  money,  and  that  the  steady  advance  of  prices  since  1896  is 
attributable  to  this  fact,  for  with  too  much  money  in  circulation 
prices  tend  to  go  higher. 

FOREIGN  AFFAIRS,   1893-1898 

In  1895  the  Monroe  Doctrine  received  emphatic  reaffirmation, 
when  it  was  vigorously  and  successfully  applied  in  a  controversy  with 
Great  Britain.  That  nation  was  engaged  in  a  dispute  with  The  Vene- 
the  weak  nation  of  Venezuela  concerning  the  boundary  zuelan  bound- 
line  between  Venezuela  and  the  British  colony  of  Guiana,  ary  dlsput 
and  when  Great  Britain  refused  President  Cleveland's  request  to 
arbitrate  the  matter  it  seemed  that  Venezuela  was  on  the  point  of 
losing  territory  that  fairly  belonged  to  her,  and  that  Great  Britain, 
in  defiance  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine,  was  about  to  acquire  new  territory 
in  the  western  hemisphere.  Displaying  the  firmness  of  purpose 
which  characterized  all  his  acts,  Cleveland,  in  a  fiery,  almost  warlike 
message,  proposed  to  Congress  to  appoint  a  commission  to  determine 
the  right  of  the  matter  independently  of  Great  Britain,  and  then  to 
enforce  the  decision,  come  what  might.  "In  making  these  recom 
mendations,"  he  added,  "I  am  fully  alive  to  the  responsibility  incurred, 
and  keenly  realize  all  the  consequences  that  may  follow.  I  am,  never 
theless,  firm  in  my  conviction  that  while  it  is  a  grievous  thing  to  con 
template  the  two  great  English-speaking  peoples  of  the  world  as  being 


470  AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 

otherwise  than  friendly  competitors  in  the  onward  march  of  civilization 
and  strenuous  and  worthy  rivals  in  all  the  arts  of  peace,  there  is  no 
calamity  which  a  great  nation  can  invite  which  equals  that  which  follows 
a  supine  submission  to  wrong  and  injustice  and  the  consequent  loss  of 
national  self-respect  and  honor,  beneath  which  are  shielded  and 
defended  a  people's  safety  and  greatness."  The  patriotism  of  his  coun 
trymen  was  aroused  by  the  implied  threat  of  war  in  the  President's 
message,  and  by  the  justice  of  the  cause  which  he  advocated,  and  all 
parties  rallied  to  his  support,  ready  to  accept  war  rather  than  yield  the 
point  at  issue.  Great  Britain  gracefully  yielded,  and  yet  as  far  as 
possible  .she  saved  her  dignity  by  negotiating  a  treaty  of  arbitration  with 
Venezuela  for  the  settlement  of  the  trouble  by  compromise  without 
waiting  for  the  report  of  the  United  States  commission. 

At  the  end  of  ten  years  of  civil  war,  Spain  had  induced  the  Cuban 
rebels  in  1878  to  lay  down  their  arms  by  granting  to  them  various  con- 
Another  cessions,  which  she  followed  in  1885  by  the  abolition  of 

Cuban  revolt  African  slavery.  Notwithstanding  this,  another  revolt 
Spain.  for  freedom  against  the  power  of  the  mother  country  broke 

Causes.  ou^-  m  Cuba  in  1895,  concerning  the  causes  of  which  a 

competent  authority  has  written,  "The  British  colonies  in  America 
in  1776  had  much  less  justification  for  rebellion."  There  was  no 
popular  law-making  assembly  in  the  island  and  no  Cuban  repre 
sentative  in  the  law-making  body  (Cortes)  of  Spain;  nowhere 
in  the  island  was  there  a  free  press,  free  speech,  or  free  religion. 
The  natives  did  not  belong  to  the  governing  class,  but  were  under  the 
arbitrary  control  of  a  Spanish  governor,  and  ofhce-holding  was  the 
prerogative  of  Spaniards;  the  natives  were  almost  entirely  excluded 
from  the  suffrage  and  were  forced  to  live  under  a  notoriously  corrupt 
administration. 

The  task  of  enforcing  the  neutrality  laws  of  the  United  States  after 
the  Cuban  Declaration  of  Independence  in  1895  was  a  most  difficult 
Therecog-  one  ^or  President  Cleveland.  Spain  sent  121,000  soldiers 
nition  of  to  maintain  her  authority,  and  under  General  Weyler, 

mrgency'  who  soon  became  known  to  the  world  as  "The  Butcher," 
the  cruelty  of  the  Spaniards  made  it  harder  for  the  sympathetic  neigh 
boring  republic  to  keep  her  hands  off.  Recognizing  that  the  strength 
of  the  Cuban  rebellion  was  in  the  country  districts,  General  Weyler 
resorted  to  a  policy  of  "reconcentration,"  that  is,  he  ordered  all  people 
of  the  country  within  eight  days  to  come  within  fortified  towns  to  live; 
and  he  enforced  the  order  with  ruthless  severity.  The  country  was  dev 
astated,  and  thousands  died  in  the  unsanitary  reconcentration  camps. 
In  this  situation  both  houses  of  Congress  at  Washington  passed  resolu- 


PROSPERITY,  PANIC,  AND  SLOW  RECOVERY  471 

tions  recognizing  the  Cubans  as  belligerents  and  the  general  public  of 
the  United  States  supported  the  resolutions,  but  President  Cleveland, 
as  was  his  right,  refused  to  put  them  into  effect.  There  was  nothing  to 
justify  such  a  step,  said  the  President,  and  he  could  repeat  the  words 
of  Secretary  Fish  to  President  Grant:  "The  Cubans  have  no  army, 
no  courts,  do  not  occupy  a  single  town  or  hamlet,  to  say  nothing  of  a 
seaport." 

Instead,  the  President  recognized  the  insurgency  of  the  Cubans,  a 
new  status  in  international  law  which  meant  that  while  they  had  not 
the  standing  of  belligerents  they  were  recognized  as  a  band  of  people 
battling  for  political  and  not  for  merely  lawless^ends. 

As  between  the  insurgents  and  the  mother  government  of  Spain 
Cleveland  strove  to  enforce  strictly  the  neutrality  laws  of  the  United 
States,  first  laid  down  by  Washington  in  1793.     These    The  neutral- 
among  other  things  forbade   the  fitting  out  of  a  vessel    *ty  of  the 

,.  .,.  T   •  ,1        TT  i    oj  •  United  States 

or  of  a  military  expedition  in  the  United  States  against    in  the 
a  state  with  which  the  United  States  was  at  peace.     Com-    struggle, 
plete  enforcement  of  the  law  was  impossible,  and  in  three  years,  from 
1895  to  1898,  at  least  seventy-one  expeditions  in  aid  of  the  insurgents 
left  the  ports  of  the  United  States  for  Cuba,  twenty-seven  of  which 
landed  safely. 

President  McKinley's  administration  opened  March  4,  1897,  with 
the  Cuban  question  overshadowing  all  others  in  public  interest  and 
day   by   day   approaching   a   crisis.     Despite   President 
Cleveland's  efforts,  sympathy  for  the  insurgents  was  on    neutrality 

the  increase  throughout  the  United  States.     Spain  finally    to  armed 

.  intervention, 

offered  autonomy  or  self-government  to  the  insurgents, 

but  the  latter  rejected  the  offer  and  repeated  their  demand  for  inde 
pendence.  American  feeling  against  Spain  was  distinctly  embittered 
in  February,  1898,  by  an  indiscreet  utterance  of  her  minister  in  Wash 
ington.  In  a  private  letter,  which  found  its  way  into  public  print,  that 
diplomat  made  the  undiplomatic  statement  that  McKinley  was  "a 
bidder  for  the  admiration  of  the  crowd  —  a  would-be  politician"; 
and  a  general  outburst  of  indignation  in  the  United  States  caused  his 
hasty  resignation.  Matters  suddenly  came  to  a  head,  when,  on  Feb 
ruary  15,  the  United  States  battleship  Maine,  on  a  friendly  visit  in  the 
harbor  of  Havana,  Cuba,  was  destroyed  by  an  explosion  and  two 
hundred  and  sixty-five  of  her  officers  and  crew  killed.  The  deed 
seemed  to  be  the  work  of  the  Spaniards,  perpetrated  out  of  resentment 
for  the  sympathy  of  the  United  States  with  the  rebels.  A  wave  of 
excitement  swept  over  the  nation,  fanned  by  the  revengeful  cry  of 
"Remember  the  Maine!" 

31 


472  AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 

Public  clamor  insisted  that  the  time  had  come  to  offer  open  assistance 
to  the  insurgents.  The  United  States  first  demanded  that  Spain  grant 
The  congres-  an  armistice  to  the  Cubans,  that  is,  that  she  stop  the  war 
futionof80"  ^°r  a  definite  Peri°d,  and  when  this  was  not  granted  in 
April  19,  satisfactory  terms,  on  the  historic  igth  of  April,  1898,  the 

anniversary  of  the  battle  of  Concord  and  Lexington  in  the 
Revolutionary  War  and  of  the  shedding  of  the  first  blood  of  the  Civil 


THE  BATTLESHIP  "  MAINE  "  ENTERING  HAVANA  HARBOR 

War  on  the  streets  of  Baltimore,  the  Congress  of  the  United  States 
passed  a  resolution  declaring  first,  "That  the  people  of  Cuba  are,  and 
of  right  ought  to  be  free  and  independent.  Second,  that  it  is  the  duty 
of  the  government  of  the  United  States  to  demand,  and  the  government 
of  the  United  States  does  hereby  demand,  that  the  government  of 
Spain  at  once  relinquish  its  authority  and  government  in  the  island  of 
Cuba,  and  withdraw  its  land  and  naval  forces  from  Cuban  waters. 
Third,  that  the  President  of  the  United  States  be,  and  he  hereby  is, 
directed  and  empowered  to  use  the  entire  land  and  naval  forces  of  the 
United  States  and  to  call  into  the  actual  service  of  the  United  States 
the  militia  of  the  several  states  to  such  extent  as  may  be  necessary  to 
carry  these  resolutions  into  effect.  Fourth,  that  the  United  States 
hereby  disclaims  any  disposition  or  intention  to  exercise  sovereign  juris 
diction  or  control  over  said  island  except  for  the  pacification  thereof, 
and  asserts  the  determination,  when  that  is  accomplished,  to  leave 
the  government  and  control  of  the  island  to  its  people."  The  nation 
was  united  in  support  of  the  action  of  Congress,  and  any  lingering  sec 
tional  feeling  between  the  Northern  and  Southern  States  disappeared 
in  a  new  burst  of  patriotism.  On  April  20  President  McKinley 
signed  the  resolution  of  intervention,  and  on  April  22  announced  to 
neutral  nations  the  existence  of  a  state  of  war. 

The  navy  was  well  prepared  for  the  ensuing  war.  To  Commodore 
George  Dewey,  in  command  of  the  Asiatic  squadron,  then  at  Hong 
Kong,  China,  were  sent  the  orders:  "War  has  commenced  between  the 
United  States  and  Spain.  Proceed  at  once  to  the  Philippine  Islands, 


PROSPERITY,  PANIC,  AND  SLOW  RECOVERY 


473 


commence  operations  at  once,  particularly  against  the  Spanish  fleet. 
You  must  capture  vessels  or  destroy.     Use  utmost  en-    Theworkof 
deavors."    Dewey,  with  his  squadron,  sailed  into  the  har-    the  navy  at 
bor  of  Manila   in   the  Philippine  Islands,  then  Spanish    ^tSphfl- 
possessions,  and  at  a  little  after  five  o'clock  in  the  morn-    ippine 
ing  of  May  i,  1898,  began  one  of  the  most  extraordinary 
naval  battles  in  the  world's  history.    "  You  may  fire  when  you  are  ready, 
C/idley,"  said  Dewey  to  the  captain  of  the  flagship,  and  the  battle 


474  AN  ERA  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT 

began.  After  barely  two  hours  of  fighting  the  American  ships  drew  off 
with  an  idea  that  their  ammunition  was  low;  but  finding  that  there 
was  still  plenty  they  rested  and  refreshed  themselves  and  returned  to 
finish  briefly  their  work  of  destruction.  The  American  ships  were  but 
slightly  damaged  and  seven  of  the  American  sailors  were  slightly  in 
jured,  while  ten  Spanish  ships  were  utterly  destroyed,  three  of  their 
land  batteries  silenced,  and  three  hundred  and  eighty-one  of  their 
sailors  killed  and  many  wounded.  The  British,  French,  and  Japanese 
fleets  at  Manila  cheerfully  respected  the  blockade  which  Dewey  threw 
The  inte  a^out  ^e  c*-ty)  ^ut  ^e  German  fleet,  the  largest  of  all— 
ference  of  larger  even  than  Dewey 's — deliberately  ignored  it.  Finally 
the  American  admiral,  through  his  flag  lieutenant,  called 
Admiral  von  Diedrich's  attention  to  his  "extraordinary  dis 
regard  of  the  usual  courtesies  of  naval  intercourse,"  and  added  bluntly, 
"  If  he  wants  a  fight  he  can  have  it  right  now."  The  German  commander 
disavowed  the  acts  to  which  Dewey  objected.  Later,  however,  when 
Dewey  and.  General  Merritt,  who  had  arrived  from  San  Francisco  with 
an  army,  began  a  combined  land  and  naval  attack  on  Manila,  the  German 
commander  placed  his  ships  in  a  position  from  which  he  could  threaten 
the  American  forces;  whereupon  Captain  Chichester,  the  British  com 
mander,  placed  his  ships  in  a  position  to  support  the  American  fleet. 
After  this  evidence  that  the  British  would  stand  up  for  the  observance  of 
international  good  manners,  von  Diedrich  gave  no  further  trouble. 

The  news  of  the  battle  "of  May  i  had  hardly  been  received  when  Com 
modore  Schley  at  the  head  of  the  "flying  squadron"  set  out  to  find  an- 
The  navy  at  °tner  Spanish  fleet,  which  had  just  arrived  on  the  western 
Santiago,  side  of  the  Atlantic.  The  hostile  fleet  was  found  in  the  harbor 
of  Santiago  on  the  southeastern  corner  of  Cuba,  and  there 
Captain  Sampson,  in  chief  command,  ably  assisted  by  Schley,  shut  them 
up  by  blockade.  On  the  third  of  July  the  imprisoned  Spanish  fleet  sailed 
•  out  of  the  harbor  and  sought  to  make  its  escape.  In  the  running  fight 
every  Spanish,  ship  was  destroyed  and  six  hundred  of  their  men  killed 
and  wounded.  The  American  ships  were  but  slightly  injured,  and  only 
one  American  was  killed  and  one  wounded.  The  news  reached  the 
United  States  on  the  Fourth  of  July. 

The  reason  for  the  sudden  departure  of  the  Spanish  fleet  from  San 
tiago  was  the  successful  fighting  of  General  Shafter  and  the  United 
The  work  of  States  soldiers  before  the  city  on  the  two  previous  days, 
the  army.  The  outlying  heights  of  El  Caney  and  San  Juan  were 
stormed  and  taken,  so  that  the  fall  of  the  city  seemed  only  a  question 
of  time.  The  actual  surrender  came  July  17.  In  another  month 


PROSPERITY,  PANIC,  AND  SLOW  RECOVERY  475 

Porto  Rico  was  taken  with  no  fighting  whatever,  and  at  about  the 
same  time  the  city  of  Manila  capitulated. 

By  the  treaty  of  peace  signed  in  Paris  late  in  1898,  Spain  agreed, 
first,  to  withdraw  from  the  island  of  Cuba;  second,  to  cede  to  the 
The  treaty  of  United  States  the  island  of  Porto  Rico;  and  third,  on 
peace  at  payment  of  $20,000,000  by  the  United  States  to  cede  to 

Paris,  1898.      ^  jatter  power  the  Philippine  Islands.     Porto  Rico  and 
the  Philippines  thus  became  possessions  of  the  United  States. 

GENERAL  REFERENCES 

BEARD,  Contemporary  American  History;  H.  T.  PECK,  Twenty  Years;  E.  B.  AN 
DREWS,  Last  Quarter  Century;  DEWEY,  National  Problems. 

SPECIAL  TOPICS 

1.  THE  INDIAN  QUESTION.    F.  E.  LEUPP,  The  Indian;  H.  H.  JACKSON,  Century  of 
Dishonor;  L.  E.  TEXTOR,  Sioux  Indians;  CURTIS,  North  American  Indian. 

2.  THE  PRESIDENTIAL  CONTEST  or  1896.    D.  R.  DEWEY,  National  Problems,  314- 
329;   Contemporaries,  IV,  536-538;  Epochs,  X,  108-124;  E.  STANWOOD,  Presidency, 
519-569. 

3.  THE  SPANISH  AMERICAN  WAR.     FOSTER,  American  Diplomacy  in  the  Orient, 
399-438;  LATANE,  World  Power,  3-81;  Contemporaries,  IV,  573-590;  F.  E.  CHADWICK, 
United  States  and  Spain,  411-588;  R.  A.  ALGER,  Spanish  American  War;  F.  E.  CHAD- 
WICK,  United  States  and  Spain  — Spanish  War;  Epochs,  X,  125-154;  BRUCE,  Expan 
sion,  187-210. 

ILLUSTRATIVE  MATERIAL 

J.  A.  Rns,  Children  of  the  Poor,  and  How  the  Other  Half  Lives;  F.  NORRIS,  The 
Octopus  and  The  Pit;  OCTAVE  THANET,  Heart  of  Toil;  O.  WISTER,  The  Virginian;  E. 
BELLAMY,  Looking  Backward;  M.  W.  FREEMAN,  The  Portion  of  Labor. 

SUGGESTIVE  QUESTIONS 

How  do  you  account  for  the  increased  amount  of  partisan  legislation  in  the  first 
two  years  of  the  administration  of  Benjamin  Harrison?  Recount  James  G.  Elaine's 
services  to  Pan-Americanism.  Review  the  part  of  Elaine  in  each  presidential  contest 
from  1876  to  1892.  Review  the  diplomacy  of  the  Harrison  administration  concerning 
questions  of  the  Pacific.  What  concrete  instances  can  you  give  in  favor  of  the  proposi 
tion  that  Cleveland  was  a  man  of  great  firmness  in  his  political  opinions?  Why  was 
Cleveland  unpopular  in  his  cwn  party  when  he  left  the  presidency?  Compare  the 
unpopularity  of  the  Supreme  Court  in  1857  and  in  1896.  Why  were  the  Republicans, 
before  th^ir  national  convention  in  1896,  uncertain  whether  or  not  they  would 
stand  against  free  silver?  Make  a  list  of  the  territorial  acquisitions  to  the  United 
States,  1783-1915.  Which  was  the  most  costly?  Which  the  most  important?  Ac 
count  for  the  disappearance  of  free  silver  from  the  Democratic  platform.  Review 
the  relations  of  the  United  States  and  Cuba,  1848-1898.  What  were  the  leading  cur 
rent  issues  before  the  people  in  the  presidential  campaigns  of  1892  and  1896? 


PART  VIII 
A   WORLD    POWER 

CHAPTER   XXVIII 
THE   UNITED   STATES   IN   WORLD   POLITICS 

TERRITORIAL  EXPANSION 

BEFORE  the  treaty  of  Paris  had  added  to  the  United  States  the 
insular  possessions  of  Porto  Rico  and  the  Philippines,  but  while  the  war 
The  annexa-  w'1^  Spain  was  still  raging,  the  United  States  took  the  step 
tion  of  that  President  Cleveland  had  feared  was  too  great  an  in 

novation,  and  annexed  the  Hawaiian  Islands.  This  was 
accomplished  by  a  joint  resolution  of  Congress,  with  the  consent  of  the 
people  of  the  islands,  that  is  to  say,  with  the  consent  of  the  American 
insurgents,  who  had  been  in  the  control  of  the  islands  since  1893.  In 
1900  came  the  addition  of  a  portion  of  the  Samoan  Islands  in  the 
Southern  Pacific,  which  had  been  the  subject  of  diplomatic  negotiation 
in  the  administration  of  Benjamin  Harrison. 

These  annexations  and  those  of  the  treaty  of  Paris,  1898,  ushered  in 
a  new  epoch  in  the  history  of  the  United  States.  By  virtue  of  them  the 
The  meaning  rePublic  abandoned  her  former  isolated  position  as  an 
of  the  new  "ocean-bound"  republic  and  enrolled  herself  as  a  world 
power,  with  world-wide  responsibilities  and  duties.  The 
Monroe  Doctrine  was  involved  in  new  difficulties.  If  the  United 
States  could  meddle  in  the  affairs  of  another  hemisphere  and  plant 
herself  there  as  she  did  in  the  Philippines,  why,  the  world  might  ask, 
could  not  a  power  of  another  hemisphere,  with  equal  right,  invade 
America?  A  further  danger  in  the  new  order  of  things  lay  in  the 
increased  possibility  that  the  United  States,  possessed  of  the  new 
outposts,  might  be  drawn  into  the  wars  of  foreign  nations.  It  was, 
too,  a  grave  responsibility  to  undertake  to  govern  dependencies  in  the 
spirit  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence. 

Directly  after  the  battle  of  Manila  in  1898  a  United  States  gunboat 
had  brought  tc  the  Philippine  Islands  from  Hong  Kong,  China,  where 
he  had  been  in  hiding,  Emilio  Aguinaldo,  a  native  of  the  islands,  who 

476 


THE  UNITED  STATES  IN  WORLD  POLITICS  477 

had  led  a  revolt  of  the  islands  against  Spain  in  1896.  When  the 
American  troops  entered  Manila  they  were  joined  by  an  The  insurrec. 
army  of  these  insurgents.  Aguinaldo  claimed  that  the  tioninthe 
Americans,  in  return  for  his  assistance,  had  made  the 
promise  to  turn  the  islands  over  to  him  when  once  they  were 
wrested  from  Spain,  and  now  he  demanded  that  the  promise  be  ful 
filled.  Denying  that  such  an  agreement  had  ever  been  made,  the 
Americans  compelled  Aguinaldo  to  lead  his  forces  out  of  Manila,  where 
their  very  presence  tended  to  incite  a  spirit  of  insurrection  against  the 
new  rulers.  After  leaving  Manila,  Aguinaldo  proceeded  to  organize 
a  Philippine  republic  with  himself  at  the  head,  and  for  four  years,  1898- 
1902,  the  United  States  and  the  Philippine  republic  contended  with 
one  another  in  guerrilla  warfare,  in  the  native  fastnesses  and  jungles, 
for  the  possession  of  the  islands.  Aguinaldo  was  captured  by  the 
Americans  in  1901  through  the  treachery  of  some  of  his  followers.  In 
another  year  the  insurrection  collapsed,  and  the  power  of  the  United 
States  in  the  archipelago  was  established. 

The  presidential  contest  of  1900  was  significant  as  showing  how 
thoroughly  the  people  of  the  United  States  indorsed  the  new  colonial 
policy,  and  it  afforded  evidence  of  the  waning  power  in 
national  politics  of  the  agrarian  and  industrial  agitation 
which  had  culminated  in  1896.  Nothing  succeeds  like 
success,  and  a  period  of  prosperity  had  come  to  give 
strength  to  the  cause  of  the  administration,  already  intrenched  in  pub 
lic  esteem  by  a  successful  war.  President  McKinley  was  renominated 
by  the  Republicans  on  a  platform  calling  for  the  retention  of  the  Philip 
pines,  while  the  Democrats  and  Populists  again  nominated  William 
J.  Bryan  on  a  platform  reaffirming  their  advocacy  of  the  free  coinage 
of  silver  and  demanding  that  the  Philippines  be  given  independence. 
The  stress  of  the  Democratic  campaign  was  not  placed  on  the  hard 
lot  of  the  working  classes  and  the  unfair  advantage  of  the  privileged 
classes,  but  rather  on  the  Republican  doctrine  of  imperialism  as  the 
chief  issue.  "  Lincoln  abolished  slavery,  McKinley  has  restored  it," 
1  'The  flag  of  the  republic  forever,  of  an  empire  never,"  was  the  cry  of 
the  Democrats.  The  issue  was  fought  out  before  the  people  at  the 
very  time  when  the  soldiers  of  the  United  States  were  engaged  in 
putting  down  the  ugly  Philippine  insurrection.  In  spite  of  this 
uncomfortable  fact,  the  people  gave  McKinley  a  popular  majority  of 
one  million  votes,  in  comparison  with  the  majority  of  six  hundred 
thousand  in  1896.  The  vote  in  the  electoral  colleges  stood  292  to  155. 
The  Socialist  Labor  and  the  Prohibition  parties  each  polled  a  very 
small  vote,  while  the  new  Social  Democratic  party,  soon  to  be  known 


47$  A  WORLD  POWER 

as  the  Socialist  party,  signalized  its  advent  into  national  politics  by 
polling  a  popular  vote  of  87,000.  This  new  party  went  farther  than 
the  Populists  in  making  radical  demands,  looking  to  still  more  direct 
participation  in  the  government  by  the  people  and  to  the  governmental 
control  of  the  transportation  routes  and  manufacturing  industries. 

September  6,  1901,  shortly  after  the  beginning  of  his  second  presi 
dential  term,  at  the  Pan-American  or  All-American  Exposition,  held 
The  assassi-  in  Buffalo>  New  York>  to  celebrate  the  progress  of  friend- 
nation  of  ship  and  good  will  between  North  America  and  South 
McKhUey.  America,  President  McKinley,  who  was  visiting  the 
exposition  and  had  just  made  a  speech  on  the  subject  of 
friendly  trade  relations  with  foreign  nations,  was  shot  by  an  anarchist. 
The  President  lingered  eight  days  and  then  quietly  passed  away- 
sincerely  mourned  for  his  attractive  personal  qualities  and  for  his 
practical  and  successful  statesmanship. 

THREE   PRESIDENTIAL   ELECTIONS 

The  era  ushered  in  by  the  Spanish  war  continued  to  the  entrance  of  the 
United  States  into  the  Great  War  in  1917.  It  is  difficult  to  get  a  proper 
The  new  perspective  of  the  age  in  which  one  lives,  but  the  general 

era>  trend  of  development  may  be  observed.  Three  presidential 

elections  were  held,  in  1904,  1908,  and  in  1912  respectively,  without 
changing  appreciably  the  tendencies  discernible  in  1900.  New  champions 
came  to  the  front  from  time  to  time  and  some  slight  changes  of  policy 
were  introduced,  but  general  characteristics  varied  little.  A  topical  rather 
than  chronological  study  will  not  only  best  bring  the  events  of  the  period 
to  mind  but  will  also  best  serve  as  an  introduction  to  the  politics  of  the 
present  day. 

In  the  foreign  affairs  of  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century,  the 
dominant  note  was  the  ever-growing  participation  of  the  United  States 
The  domi-  in  world  politics,  while  prosperity,  increasing  direct  par- 
nant  note.  ticipation  by  the  people  in  the  affairs  of  government,  and 
progress  in  the  governmental  regulation  of  corporate  wealth,  character 
ized  domestic  affairs. 

Vice  President  Roosevelt,  who  came  to  the  presidency  at  the  death 
of  President  McKinley,  maintained  his  own  leadership  and  that  of  the 
The  presi-  Republican  party  by  a  sweeping  victory  at  the  polls  in 
dential  con-  1904  over  his  Democratic  antagonist,  Judge  Alton  B. 
test  of  1904.  parker  of  New  York.  The  vote  in  the  electoral  colleges 
stood  336  to  140,  and  at  the  polls  the  Republican  plurality  was  over 
2,500,000.  The  Socialists  under  the  lead  of  Eugene  V.  Debs,  their 
candidate  in  1900,  raised  their  vote  to  400,000,  the  Populists  running 


THE  UNITED   STATES  IN  WORLD   POLITICS 


479 


alone  secured  but  117,000  votes,  while  the  Prohibition  and  Socialist 
Labor  parties  again  proved  very  weak.  The  differences  between  the 
two  leading  parties  were  slight.  The  Republicans  appealed  to  their 
record  of  prosperity  for  justification  of  their  policies;  the  Democrats 

advocated  tariff  reform  and  still 
had  leanings  toward  Populist  doc 
trines,  though  they  definitely  re 
nounced  their  free  silver  stand  of 
the  two  previous  campaigns. 

In  the  presidential  campaign 
of    1908,  after   a    The  presi. 

spirited   contest   the    dential  con- 
.      , .  f     .  r         test  of  1908. 

nomination    of    the 

Republicans  went  to  the  Secre 
tary  of  War,  William  H.  Taft, 
who  had  had  a  brilliant  career  as 
judge  in  the  Circuit  Court  of  the 
United  States,  as  governor  of  the 
Philippine  Islands,  and  as  a  mem 
ber  of  President  Roosevelt's  cab 
inet.  The  Democrats  a  third  time 
gave  their  nomination  to  William 
J.  Bryan,  and  five  small  parties 
entered  the  field.  Inasmuch  as 
the  differences  between  the  two 
leading  parties  were  minor,  the 
campaign  was  uninteresting. 
Each  stood  for  a  downward  re 
vision  of  the  tariff,  the  curbing  of 
the  trusts,  publicity  of  campaign 

Contributions,  and  the  development  of  the  natural  resources  of  the 
country.  Taft,  profiting  largely  by  the  popularity  of  the  Roosevelt 
policies,  received  a  popular  vote  of  7,600,000  to  6,400,000  for  Bryan; 
the  electoral  vote  stood  in  his  favor  321  to  162.  The  heavy  Socialist 
vote  of  1904  was  slightly  increased,  while  that  of  the  other  "  third 
parties"  remained  very  small. 

By  1912  an  insurgent  element  of  the  Republican  party,  which  was 
opposed  to  the  Taft  administration  for  its  alleged  leanings  toward 
conservatism,  was  so  strong   as  to   cause  a  tremendous    The  Reput,_ 
conflict  within  the  party  over  the  choice  of  a  presidential    lican  split 
candidate.     By  dint  of  great  exertions  the  conservatives,    ] 
who  favored  no  sweeping  changes  in  legislation,  gained   control   of 


Copyright  by  Pach  Bros. 

THEODORE  ROOSEVELT 


480 


A  WORLD  POWER 


the  national  convention,  and  gave  the  nomination  to  President  Taft 
over  ex-President  Roosevelt,  who  was  at  the  head  of  the  insurgent  or 
progressive  wing  of  the  party.  So  tenacious  of  their  views  were  the 
Progressives  that,  though  defeated,  they  refused  to  accept  the 
verdict  against  them,  and  like  the  discontented  in  politics  through 
out  the  history  of  the  nation,  whenever  their  numbers  have  been 
sufficiently  large  and  their  views  sufficiently  dear,  these  Repub 
lican  radicals  of  1912  separated  themselves  from  their  former  party 

and  formed  the  new  Progressive 
party, popularly  called  the  "Bull 
Moose  party."  It  had  been  just 
such  a  wave  of  discontent  that 
had  called  forth  the  Democratic- 
Republicans  in  the  time  of  Wash 
ington,  the  Whigs  in  Jackson's 
time,  the  Republicans  in  Pierce 's, 
the  Liberal  Republicans  in 
Grant's,  the  Gold  Democrats  in 
Cleveland 's,  and  the  Green- 
backers,  the  Prohibitionists,  the 
Populists,  and  the  Socialists,  at 
various  times.  The  platform  of 
the  new  party  called  for  advanced 
social  legislation  in  the  interest 
of  the  laboring  classes,  woman's 
suffrage,  stricter  control  of  the 
trusts,  and  other  changes  more  or 
less  akin  to  the  demands  of  the 
Socialists.  In  their  enthusiasm 
for  their  leader  and  founder,  the 
members  of  the  new  party  of  1912 
cast  aside  the  third  term  tradi 
tion,  which  from  the  time  of  Washington  down  to  1912  had  debarred 
every  President,  with  the  single  exception  of  Grant,  from  seeking  a  third 
term,  and  nominated  ex-President  Roosevelt  as  their  candidate.  His 
heroic  conduct  when  attacked  by  a  would-be  assassin  at  Milwaukee, 
Wisconsin,  in  the  course  of  his  campaign  speaking,  increased  the  ardent 
admiration  of  his  followers. 

There  was  likewise  an  exciting  contest  between  the  conservatives 
and  the  radicals  in  the  Democratic  convention,  which  ended  in  the 
victory  of  the  radicals,  who  succeeded  in  writing  their  ideas  into  the  plat 
form  and  in  giving  the  nomination  to  Woodrow  Wilson,  the  Democratic 


WOODROW  WILSON 


THE  UNITED   STATES  IN  WORLD   POLITICS  481 

governor  of  New  Jersey.     In  this  case  the  defeated  wing  of  the  party 
gracefully  accepted  the  verdict  against  them  and  remained    The  struggle 
within  the  party.    The  leading  figure  in  the  convention  was    jJeiSocratic 
the  party's  candidate  in  three  past  campaigns,  William  J.    nomination 
Bryan,  who  as  champion  of   the  radical  interests  again    m  1912 
proved  himself  the  master  convention  orator  of  the  age.     As  in  1904  and 
1908  the  differences  between  the  two  leading  parties  were  very  slight. 
Out  of  a  total  of  15,000,000  votes  cast  on  election  day  Wilson 
received  6,000,000,  Roosevelt  4,000,000,  Taft  3,500,000,  and  Debs, 
for  a  fourth  time  the  Socialist  candidate,  900,000.     The    The  result 
electoral  vote  was  435  for  Wilson,  88  for  Roosevelt,  and    at  the  polls. 
8  for   Taft.     Debs   received   no   electoral   vote,   though  his   popular 
vote  was  nearly  double   that  given  him  in  1908.     The  Prohibition 
and   Socialist   Labor   vote   was   again   almost   negligible.     So    com 
pletely  had   the  lines  of   cleavage  of   1896,  occasioned  by  agrarian 
and  industrial  discontent,   disappeared,   that  the  Populists  did  not 
put  a  candidate  into  the  field.     A  large  part  of  their  strength  probably 
went  to  the  Progressives. 

PROBLEMS   OF  INSULAR   GOVERNMENT 

One  of  the  problems  arising  out  of  the  Spanish  War  was  the  future 
of  Cuba.  The  prompt  withdrawal  of  the  Spanish  troops  from  the 
island  raised  the  question  whether  or  not  the  time  had  The  sanitary 
come  to  withdraw  United  States  troops  in  accordance  problems  in 
with  the  resolution  of  Congress  of  April  19,  1898.  If 
the  troops  were  not  at  once  withdrawn,  it  would  be  necessary  to  decide 
how  long  the  army  was  to  remain  there  and  how  it  should  be  employed. 
The  question  was  also  to  be  settled  whether  the  United  States  in 
the  language  of  the  resolution  by  which  the  United  Sates  had  de 
manded  the  withdrawal  of  Spain  from  Cuba,  should  "  leave  the 
government  and  control  of  the  island  to  its  people,"  that  is,  recog 
nize  the  independence  of  Cuba  as  it  seemed  in  duty  bound  to  do, 
or  should  forcibly  annex  it.  Without  committing  himself  on  the 
latter  question,  President  McKinley  decided  that  the  army  should 
remain  in  Cuba,  temporarily  at  least;  and  he  set  it  to  work  clean 
ing  up  the  island.  Under  its  supervision  modern  waterworks,  sewers, 
and  paving  and  lighting  facilities,  of  which  the  Cuban  cities  and  towns 
knew  little,  were  installed,  and  the  islanders  were  taught  how  to  sweep 
the  streets  and  how  to  ward  off  yellow  fever.  The  conquest  of  this 
great  scourge  of  the  tropics  was  the  result  of  investigations  which 
proved  that  the  germ  of  the  disease  was  carried  by  mosquitoes. 

The  problem  of  Cuban  government  was  approached  slowly.     The 


4g2  A  WORLD  POWER 

Cubans  were  allowed  to   hold   a   constitutional   convention  and   to 

draw  up  a  form  of  government  of  their  cwn. 

T1a  nTthe  was  an  almost  exact  copy  of  the  government  of  the  United 
new  republic  states  and  was  formally  adopted  by  the  Cubans  after 
of  Cuba'  incorporating  in  it,  to  make  it  acceptable  to  their  pro 

tectors  the  provisions  of  the  Platt  amendment  passed  by  the  Congress 
of  the  United  States  as  an  amendment  to  an  army  appropriation  act 
These  were,  first,  that  Cuba  make  no  treaty  with  a  foreign  nation  which 
would  impair  its  independence  or  in  any  way  give  to  a  foreign  power 
lodgment  or  control  in  the  island;  second,  that  the  island  observe 
certain  conditions  in  contracting  a  public  debt;  third  that  she  give 
to  the  United  States  the  right  to  intervene  in  Cuban  affairs  for  the 
preservation  of  Cuban  independence,  the  maintenance  of  a  government 
adequate  for  the  protection  of  life,  property,  and  individual  liberty  ; 
and  fourth,  that  the  island  "sell  or  lease  to  the  United  States  lands 
necessary  for  coaling  or  naval  stations." 

The  new  republic  started  on  its  way  May  20,  1902,  under  President 
Palma,  who  had  been  President  of  the  insurrectionary  republic  of  Cuba 
Three  Cuban    in  the  seventies  and  now  served  again  until  1906.    An  m- 
pSents        surrection  deposed  him  shortly  after  the  beginning  of  his 
second  term,  whereupon  the  United  States  intervened  and  remained  in 
the  island  till  peace  was  restored  and  President  Gomez  took  office  m 
IQOO  followed  by  President  Menocal  in  1913,  now  serving  a  second  term. 
The  settlement  of  the  government  of  the  Philippines  was  also  a 
difficult  matter.     Stable  civil  government  had   to  be  provided  for 
7  coo  ooo    people,    scattered    among    thirty   tribes   and 
£™ent      over  'three    thousand   islands,    450,000    of   whom   were 
of  thePWl-       dassified  by  the  census-takers  as  wild.     As  the  problem 
isCds.  has  been  worked  out  down  to  the   present   time,  three 

stages  in  the  development  of   the  American  control  of   the  islands 
have  appeared.     First,  from  the  cessation  of  hostilities  to  the  con- 
cluln'of  the  treaty  'of  peace,  the  islands  were  under  the  military 
power  of  the  President  as  commander-in-chief  of  the  Armies  of   .he 
United  States.     Likewise,  in  the  second  stage    from  the  treaty 
peace  till  special  action  by  Congress  in  1902  changing  the  form  of 
government!  the  islands  were  allowed  by  Congress  to  remain jnde 
fhe  control  of  the  President,  who  saw  fit  to  associate  with  hunseU 
in  their  immediate   government,  first,  a  military    Commission   and 
later  a   civil  commission.     William  H.  Taft  was   the  head  of  th  s 
rivil    commission   and   was    afterwards    appointed    to   be   the      rsi 
iv  1  goverTr of   the  Philippines.     The  third  stage  in  the :  contro 
of  the  islands  was  entered  upon  in  1902,  when  Congress  took  the 


90°      Longitude  East  120° from  Greenwich     150° 


150°   Longitude  West  120'  from  Gree 


TLA  N-'T  II  C  MA,°sE.IRY\7 

,'<&  '  /0M° 


SHOWING   THE 

TERRITORIAL    ACQUISITIONS 

OF    THE 

STATES 


THE  UNITED  STATES  IN  WORLD  POLITICS  483 

responsibility  of  the  islands  from  the  shoulders  of  the  President  and 
assumed  their  government  itself  under  a  new  system.  Under  this 
system  a  native  legislative  assembly  elected  by  the  people  was  to 
work  in  connection  with  a  governor  and  a  commission  or  upper  legis 
lative  house,  both  appointed  by  the  President  of  the  United  States. 
This  plan  reproduced  the  British  type  of  colonial  government,  prac 
ticed  generally  in  the  American  colonies  up  to  1776,  the  lower  house 
of  the  legislature  representing  the  people,  and  the  upper  house  and  the 
governor  representing  the  mother  country.  In  the  Philippines,  as  in 
the  earlier  British  colonies,  the  experiment  was  attended  by  conflicts 
of  authority  and  dissatisfaction  of  the  governed. 

The   Democratic  platform  of    1912   declared  for   "an   immediate 
declaration  of  the  nation's  purpose  to  recognize  the  independence  of 
the  Philippine  Islands  as  soon  as  a  stable  government  can    Mofe  gelf_ 
be  established,"  but  demanded  that  coaling  stations  and    government 
naval  bases  should  be  retained.     In   the  spirit  of   this    fhTphilip°- 
declaratioi  President  Wilson  in  1913  granted  to  the  islands    pines  in 
an  increase  of  self-government  by  making  his  appoint-    1913' 
ments  to  the  upper  house  of   the  legislature  such  that  the  natives 
would  be  in  a  majority  in  that  body,  and  by  throwing  many  other 
offices  open  to  them.     Now  he  favors  independence  for  the  islands, 

Essentially  the  same  plan  of  government  was  established  in  Porto 
Rico  as  Congress  set  up  in  the  Philippine  Islands,  here  too  with 
serious  conflicts  of  authority.  The  clash  in  Porto  Rico 
between  the  lower  house  of  the  legislature  on  the  one  government 
hand,  and  the  governor  and  the  upper  house  on  the  other, 
became  so  bitter  that  at  one  time  the  lower  house  refused 
to  vote  the  appropriations  necessary  to  meet  the  running  expenses  of 
the  government.  The  affairs  of  the  island  government  were  dead 
locked  until  the  Congress  of  the  United  States  availed  itself  of  a  course 
of  action  worked  out  by  the  British  in  their  long  experience  in  colonial 
affairs,  and  by  a  new  act  provided  that  it  would  be  lawful  in  such  a 
crisis  for  the  authorities  of  the  United  States  in  Porto  Rico  to  assume 
that  the  appropriations  voted  by  the  island  legislature  for  the  preceding 
year  were  also  voted  for  the  coming  year. 

Porto  Rico  has  prospered  under  the  control  of  the  United  States. 
Whereas,  when  she  came  into  the  possession  of  the  United    The 
States  in  1898,  there  was  but  one  building  in  the  island    prosperity  of 
erected  for  school  purposes,  in  1913  there  were  three  hun-    Porto  Rlco" 
dred  and  seventy-five  school  buildings.     In  the  first  year  of  United 
States  administration  26,000  pupils  were  enrolled  in  the  schools,  but 
In  1915  over  160,000.     There  were  170  miles  of  macadamized  highway 


484  A  WORLD  POWER 

in  1898,  but  in  1915  over  660  miles  of  good  roads.  The  exportation  of 
sugar,  the  staple  crop  of  the  island,  has  increased  from  68,000  tons 
in  1901  to  380,000  tons  in  1915,  the  total  foreign  commerce  from 
$17,000,000  yearly  to  $86,000,000. 

The  same  progress  has  followed  the  control  of  the  United  States  in  her 
The  other  other  possessions.  She  now  holds  in  all  8000  islands,  which 
island  support  a  population  of  10,000,000,  or  more  than  the  en 

tire  population  of  the  United  States  a  century  ago.  The 
commerce  of  these  islands  with  the  United  States  exceeds  $325,000,000, 
or  as  much  as  the  total  commerce  of  the  United  States  in  1850. 

The  inhabitants  of  Louisiana,  Florida,  Texas,  California,  Alaska,  and 
Hawaii  became  citizens  of  the  United  States  by  the  annexation  of  their 
The  consti-  territory.  In  the  case  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  Philippine 

tutional  Islands  and  Porto  Rico  the  treaty  of  cession  to  the  United 

status  of  the       „,  ,.  ,  .  ..        . 

new  island        otates  aid  not  comer  citizenship,   but   the  question  of 


possessions,  ^gjj.  status  was  left  to  be  decided  by  the  Congress 
of  the  United  States.  Acts  of  Congress  have  accordingly  declared 
these  inhabitants  citizens  of  their  respective  islands  but  not  citizens  of 
the  United  States.  The  Dred  Scott  Decision  had  maintained  that  the 
Constitution  of  its  own  force  and  with  all  its  provisions  extended  to  all 
the  lands  of  the  United  States.  After  the  Spanish  War  of  1898  the 
Supreme  Court  decided  that  certain  parts  of  the  Constitution  did  not 
necessarily  extend  to  all  the  country's  possessions,  in  other  words  that 
the  Constitution  did  not  necessarily  follow  the  flag.  Congress  was 
therefore  in  a  position  to  exercise  over  the  various  islands  any  form  oj 
government  it  saw  fit,  subject  to  the  approval  of  the  Supreme  Court 
Says  a  prominent  legal  authority:  Congress  has  full  power  "to  take 
such  action  as  it  deems  best  regarding  the  government,  administration, 
and  fundamental  laws  of  dependent  territory,  whether  that  territory 
be  mainland  or  be  an  island  in  the  Pacific.  ...  In  the  exercise  of 
this  power  Congress  is  under  no  obligation  to  adopt  any  rules  of 
general  application,  but  may  modify  its  action  as  in  its  judgment 
seems  wise,  in  order  to  meet  varying  conditions." 

THE   PEACE  MOVEMENT 

The  fears  of  the  anti-imperialists  of  1898-1900  that  a  rising  war 
spirit  would  accompany  the  participation  of  the  United 

conference        States  in  world  politics   were   fortunately  not  realized. 

J*  The  Hague,  There  arose,  instead,  a  world-wide  movement  in  favor  of 
international  peace  and  arbitration,  not  originating  in  the 

United  States  but  powerfully  aided  by  her  sympathy  and  cooperation. 

In  1899  the  Czar  of  Russia  invited  the  nations  of  the  world  to  meet 


THE  UNITED  STATES  IN  WORLD  POLITICS  485 

in  The  Hague,  Holland,  to  confer  as  to  the  best  methods  of  lessening 
the  number  of  wars  and  their  cruelties.  Twenty-six  governments, 
including  the  United  States  and  most  of  the  states  of  Europe,  were 
represented.  Tentative  agreements  were  formulated  concerning  the 
laws  of  war  on  land  and  sea,  and  concerning  international  arbitration. 
Declarations,  signed  by  most  of  the  leading  powers,  were  made  against 
the  throwing  of  projectiles  from  balloons,  against  the  use  of  projec 
tiles  rilled  with  poisonous  gases,  and  against  the  use  of  dumdum  bul 
lets  which  expand  or  flatten  upon  striking. 

The  United  States  was  quick  to  support  the  international  court  of 
arbitration  recommended  by  the  conference.  The  settlement  of  dis 
putes  by  this  method  had  been  common  in  her  history.  The  inter_ 
From  Washington  to  McKinley  fifty-seven  treaties  of  national  court 
arbitration  were  entered  into  by  the  United  States,  the  at  The 
most  noteworthy  being  that  in  connection  with  the  Ala-  Hague' 
bama  claims,  and  after  the  establishment  of  the  new  court,  from  1900  to 
1909,  twenty-four  more  such  treaties  were  negotiated.  The  interna 
tional  court  of  arbitration,  which  now  meets  in  a  beautiful  peace 
palace  at  The  Hague,  erected  by  the  American  multimillionaire,  Andrew 
Carnegie,  has  settled  almost  a  score  of  international  questions,  some 
of  which  might  otherwise  have  led  to  serious  consequences  and  even 
to  war.  The  first  case  to  come  before  the  court  arose  out  of  a  dis 
pute  between  Mexico  and  the  United  States  over  the  "  Pious  Fund," 
a  charitable  fund  dating  from  the  early  days  of  Spanish  rule  in  Califor 
nia.  This  fund  had  first  been  under  the  control  of  the  Jesuits  and  then 
of  the  Franciscans,  from  whom  it  had  been  taken  over  first  by  Spain  and 
then  by  the  new  republic  of  Mexico.  By  way  of  indemnityMexico  had 
promised  to  the  church  authorities  payment  in  perpetuity  of  six  per 
cent  on  the  capital  confiscated,  but  the  payments  had  ceased  when  Cali 
fornia  passed  to  the  United  States.  On  behalf  of  the  church  the  United 
States  demanded  settlement  from  Mexico,  and  by  the  award  Mexico 
was  forced  to  pay  $1,420,000  and  thereafter  $43,000  annually. 

In  1910  the  same  tribunal  brought  to  an  end  the  century-old  dis 
pute  between  the  United  States  and  Great  Britain  over  the  respective 
rights  of  the  two  nations  on  the  fishing  grounds  of  the    The  settle- 
Grand  Banks  off  the  coast  of  Newfoundland.     By  the    gagUeat0The 
treaty  of  Paris,  1783,  the  right  of  the  United  States  to    the  dispute 
fish  in  certain  parts   off  the   Newfoundland   coasts  was    Britain^over 
recognized.      Great   Britain   claimed    that    these    rights    fishing 
were  annulled  by  the  War  of  1812  and  were  not  renewed    Newfound- 
by  the  treaty  of  Ghent.     The  United  States  contended    land- 
that  these  rights  could  not  be  annulled  by  this  war,  as  they  were 


486  A  WORLD  POWER 

enjoyed  by  the  colonists  before  1776  and  were  therefore  independent 
of  a  treaty.  Various  treaties  on  the  subject  from  time  to  time  defined 
the  respective  rights  of  the  two  countries,  but  disputes  continued, 
till  at  length  they  were  submitted  to  The  Hague  tribunal.  The  deci 
sion  allowed  Great  Britain  to  make  reasonable  rules  to  govern  the  fish 
ermen  on  the  Banks,  but  prevented  her  from  subjecting  the  fishermen 
of  the  United  States  there  to  unjust  dues  and  from  forbidding  them  to 
enter  British  ports  to  buy  bait  and  supplies  and  to  dry  their  fish. 
The  moral  effect  of  the  award  was  the  more  impressive  from  the  fact 
that  the  representative  of  the  United  States  on  the  board  of  arbitra 
tion  voted  against  the  leading  contentions  of  his  own  country. 
Theboun-  In  I9°3j  DY  a  special  court  of  arbitration  appointed 

dary  line  of  by  the  United  States  and  Great  Britain,  the  boundary  line 
settled  by  between  Alaska  and  the  Dominion  of  Canada  was  finally 
arbitration.  settled. 

After  these  signal  triumphs  of  arbitration,  as  remarkable  as  that 
of  the  Geneva  award  on  the  Alabama  claims  and  the  settlement  of  the 
TheTaft  dispute  over  the  seal  fisheries  of  the  Alaskan  waters, 
arbitration  President  Taft  gave  himself  ardently  to  the  extension 
of  the  general  principle  of  arbitration  by  the  negotiation  of 
comprehensive  peace  treaties  both  with  Great  Britain  and  with  France. 
The  Roosevelt  arbitration  treaties  with  these  two  countries,  1908,  had 
expressly  stipulated  that  only " differences  of  a  legal  nature"  should  be 
submitted  to  arbitration  at  the  Hague,  that  is,  "differences  that  do  not 
affect  the  vital  interests,  the  independence,  or  the  honor  of  the  two  con 
tracting  parties."  The  Taft  treaties,  1911,  submitted  to  the  same  arbi 
tration  "all  differences  .  .  .  which  are  justiciable  in  their  nature  by 
reason  of  being  susceptible  of  decision  by  the  application  of  the  prin 
ciples  of  law  and  equity."  Quarrels,  however,  it  was  argued,  would 
arise  over  the  interpretation  of  "justiciable,"  particularly  as  to  whether 
differences  concerned  with  the  "vital  interest"  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine 
were  justiciable;  and  President  Taft's  agreements  were  never  ratified. 

The  Wilson  administration  had  not  been  in  office  six  months  before 
it  proceeded  to  negotiate  a  series  of  treaties,  which  sought  to  serve  the 
The  Wilson  cause  of  international  peace  by  a  different  plan,  called 
peace  "  diplomatic  postponement."  More  than  a  score  of 

nations,  including  Great  Britain,  France,  Italy,  Spain,  and 
most  of  the  republics  of  Central  and  South  America,  have  formally 
accepted  such  treaties  with  the  United  States,  which  provide,  first, 
that  "  all  disputes  ...  of  every  nature  whatsoever,  to  the  settlement 
of  which  previous  arbitration  treaties  or  agreements  do  not  apply  in 
their  terms  or  are  not  applied  in  fact,"  shall  be  referred  to  a  permanent 


THE  UNITED  STATES  IN  WORLD  POLITICS  487 

international  commission  for  investigation  and  report;  second,  that 
the  commission  shall  have  one  year  in  which  to  complete  its  work; 
and  third,  that  the  two  nations  concerned  shall  not  begin  war  on  one 
another  over  the  question  under  consideration  before  twelve  months 
shall  have  elapsed.  It  is  believed  that  the  interim  will  give  national 
passions  time  to  cool  and  in  most  cases  prevent  war.  Moreover,  the 
permanent  commission,  ready  to  act  at  all  times,  is  empowered  by  the 
treaties  to  investigate  the  questions  in  dispute,  whether  the  embroiled 
nations  seek  its  good  offices  or  not. 

In  1905,  after  Japan  and  Russia  had  been  at  war  with  one  another 
for  more  than  a  year  over  their  respective  rights  in  Korea  and  Man 
churia,  President  Roosevelt  induced  both  powers  to  send  The  treaty  of 
representatives  to  the  United  States  to  discuss  terms  of  Portsmouth, 
peace.  They  met  at  Portsmouth,  New  Hampshire,  and  succeeded  in 
reaching  terms  that  brought  the  war  to  a  close.  For  these  services  in 
the  cause  of  international  peace  President  Roosevelt  was  awarded 
the  Nobel  prize  of  $40,000,  granted  yearly  from  the  income  of  the 
estate  left  by  Alfred  Nobel,  a  Swedish  scientist,  to  men  who  distinguish 
themselves  in  science,  letters,  or  international  affairs  The  same  honor 
was  later  conferred  on  Elihu  Root,  Secretary  of  War  and  Secretary  of 
State  under  President  Roosevelt  and  afterward  United  States  Senator 
from  New  York,  for  his  work  in  behalf  of  international  peace. 

As  champion  of  peace  President  Roosevelt  suggested  the  calling  of  a 
second  peace  conference  at  The  Hague  in  1907,  but  he  yielded  to  the 

Czar  of  Russia  the  honor  of  actually  extending  the  call.    , 

^  f  ,     ,   •      ,,  •  ,     The  second 

Forty-four  governments  were  represented  in  this  second   The  Hague 

conference.     The  deliberations  of  the  conference,  held  in    Pea9e 

•        i       i  •  conference. 

the  home  of  the  permanent  court  of  international  arbitra 
tion,  resulted  in  the  formation  of  tentative  agreements,  all  subject  to 
ratification  by  the  nations,  touching  such  subjects  as  arbitration,  the 
employment  of  force  in  the  recovery  of  international  debts,  the  manner 
in  which  wars  shall  be  opened,  the  laws  and  customs  of  war  on  land  and 
on  sea,  the  rights  and  duties  of  neutrals,  submarine  mines,  bombard 
ment,  and  the  creation  of  an  international  prize  court.     Most  of  these 
articles  were  ratified  by  the  leading  nations  of  the  world.     A  third 
conference  was  recommended  to  be  held  at  The  Hague  in  1915,  but 
because  of  the  outbreak  of  war  in  Europe  in  1914  this  did  not  convene. 
While  the  first  peace  conference  at  The  Hague  achieved  the  creation 
of  the  international  court  of  arbitration,  the  second  con 
tributed  the  recommendation  of  a  Supreme  Court  of  the    CourTofThe 
World,  not  to  supersede  the  existing  tribunal  but  to  sup-    ^r°rleistedt 
plement  it.    The  difference  between  award  by  arbitration 
32 


488  A  WORLD  POWER. 

and  award  by  a  court  is  obvious.  When  arbitration  is  resorted  to, 
the  parties  in  dispute  select  from  a  permanent  list  of  arbitrators, 
appointed  by  the  different  nations,  certain  referees  to  settle  their  con 
troversy;  the  board  is  not  the  same  body  in  any  two  cases,  the  decision 
is  not  made  in  accordance  with  definitely  established  principles  of  law, 
and  the  principles  of  any  one  case  do  not  necessarily  apply  to  any  other 
case.  A  Supreme  Court  of  the  World,  on  the  other  hand,  would  con 
sist  of  judges  appointed  for  a  term  of  years;  it  would  convene  regularly 
and  in  it  the  same  body  of  men  would  pass  upon  the  different  cases  and 
administer  the  regularly  accepted  rules  of  international  law;  a  single 
case  would  not  be  decided  out  of  connection  with  the  other  cases  before 
the  court,  but  precedents  would  grow  up  for  the  guidance  of  the  judges. 
Said  General  Grant  in  1879:  "  Although  educated  and  brought  up  as 
a  soldier,  and  probably  having  been  in  as  many  battles  as  any  one  else, 
General  certainly  in  as  many  as  most  people  could  take  part  in,  yet 

Grant  on  there  never  was  a  time  nor  a  day  when  it  was  not  my 
on*  desire  that  some  just  and  fair  way  should  be  established 
for  settling  difficulties,  instead  of  bringing  innocent  persons  into 
conflict,  and  withdrawing  from  productive  labor  able-bodied  men, 
who  in  a  large  majority  of  cases  have  no  particular  interest  in  the 
subject  over  which  they  are  contending.  I  look  forward  to  a  day 
when  there  shall  be  courts  established  that  shall  be  recognized  by 
all  nations,  which  will  take  into  consideration  all  differences  between 
nations,  and  settle  by  arbitration  or  decision  of  such  courts,  their 
questions." 

The  Supreme  Court  of  the  World  has  not  yet  come  into  existence  and 
many  difficulties  will  doubtlessly  be  encountered  in  inaugurating  it; 
but  that  the  first  step  was  taken  at  The  Hague  in  the  direction  of  the  cre 
ation  of  a  Supreme  Court  for  all  peoples,  the  dream  of  centuries,  was  an 
indication  of  progress  toward  the  unity  of  mankind. 

THE  PANAMA  CANAL  AND  OTHER  INTERNAL  IMPROVEMENTS 

The  territorial  additions  to  the  United  States  at  the  close  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  like  those  of  the  middle  of  the  century,  directed 
The  owin  public  attention  to  the  desirability  of  improving  transpor- 
demand  for  tation  facilities  between  the  Atlantic  and  the  Pacific  by 
Pad&fcanal  t^ie  construction  of  an  interoceanic  canal.  The  attitude 
in  Central  of  the  nation  toward  the  original  plan  of  1850  for  a  joint 
control  over  such  canal  with  Great  Britain  underwent  a 
change  in  the  next  half  century.  The  presence  of  the  French  in 
Mexico  during  the  Civil  War  brought  a  new  realization  to  Americans 
of  what  it  might  mean  to  the  nation  to  have  a  strong  European 


THE  UNITED  STATES  IN  WORLD  POLITICS  489 

power  secure  lodgment  in  Central  or  South  America.  This  apprehen 
sion  was  presently  accentuated  by  the  expenditure  of  $300,000,000 
by  the  French  in  their  attempt  to  build  a  French  Atlantic-Pacific 
Canal  at  the  Isthmus  of  Panama,  and  again  by  the  aggressive  attitude 
shown  by  Great  Britain  toward  a  weak  American  republic  in  the 
Venezuelan  boundary  episode.  A  strictly  national  canal  was  coming 
to  be  the  demand  of  the  country.  The  war  with  Spain  came  on,  and 
at  the  outset  the  largest  and  best  battleship  of  the  United  States,  the 
Oregon,  needed  in  Cuban  waters  but  located  off  San  Francisco,  was 
obliged  to  make  a  voyage  of  12,000  miles  around  South  America  before 
she  could  go  on  the  duty  which  was  desired  of  her.  Via  the  proposed 
canal,  either  at  Nicaragua  or  at  Panama,  Cuban  waters  were  removed 
from  California  only  about  4000  miles.  The  voyage  demonstrated 
the  military  value  of  the  proposed  canal,  and  the  necessity  to  the 
United  States  of  exercising  sole  control  over  it. 

As  in  1850,  so  at  the  end  of  the  century,  the  most  popular  of  the 
proposed  routes  ran  through  Nicaragua,  over  which  hovered,  like  a 
forbidding    spirit,    the    Clayton-Bulwer    treaty   with   its    Thg  abro  a 
stipulation  that  Great  Britain  must  be  taken  in  as  a    tion  of  the 
partner  if  the  canal  should  be  located  there.     How  to  get    ^Jf^er' 
rid  of  the  treaty  became  an  all-absorbing  question.    Presi-    treaty  by 
dent    McKinley    and    after    him    President    Roosevelt, 


through  their   Secretary  of   State   John   Hay,  took   the    Jeaty  of 
initiative,  and  out  of  the  resulting  negotiations  with  Great 
Britain  came  the  Hay-Pauncefote  treaty,  1901.     By  the  terms  of  the 
new  treaty  that  of  1850  was  "superseded,"  and  it  was  agreed  that 
the  canal,  by  whatever  route,  "may  be  constructed  under  the  auspices 
of  the  government  of  the  United  States  alone,"  and  that  "subject  to 
the  provisions  of  the  present  treaty,  the  said  government  shall  have 
and  enjoy  all  the  rights  incident  to  such  construction." 

The  question  still  remained,  which  route,  Nicaragua  or  Panama? 
Events  followed  rapidly.  Committees  of  Congress  and  commissions 
appointed  by  the  President  investigated  the  relative 
merits  of  all  proposed  routes  and  both  houses  of  Congress  route, 
debated  the  subject.  One  commission,  headed  by 
Admiral  Walker,  reported  in  favor  of  locating  the  water 
way  in  Nicaragua,  and  then  suddenly  changed  its  recommendation  in 
favor  of  Panama  when  it  was  ascertained  that  the  French  Panama 
Company,  which  was  still  in  existence,  would  dispose  of  its  rights  and 
all  its  property  still  remaining  in  Panama  for  $40,000,000.  Congress 
authorized  the  buying  out  of  the  French  company  and  the  location  of 
the  canal  along  the  old  French  route  in  Panama,  then  a  part  of  Colombia 


490  A  WORLD  POWER 

(once  New  Granada),  if  the  right  of  way  could  be  secured;  and  if  Colom 
bia  would  not  grant  this,  the  route  through  Nicaragua  was  to  be 
chosen.  Colombia  was  offered  $10,000,000  outright  and  $250,000 
yearly  for  the  grant  to  the  United  States  of  certain  rights  over  a 
strip  of  land  for  the  canal,  but  probably  hoping  for  more  generous 
terms  she  turned  a  deaf  ear  and  adjourned  her  Congress,  October  31, 
1903,  without  accepting  the  offer.  Within  a  few  days  Panama,  in  a 
bloodless  revolution,  declared  herself  independent  of  Colombia,  and 
President  Roosevelt  hastened  to  recognize  the  new  state  as  a  free  and 
independent  nation.  Panama  herself  then  speedily  concluded  the 
desired  treaty  with  the  United  States,  giving  to  the  latter  power  com 
plete  sovereignty  over  a  strip  of  land  across  her  territory  ten  miles  wide. 
Panama  secured  practically  the  same  compensation  as  was  offered  to 
Colombia,  and  made  sure  for  herself  the  commercial  benefits  that  she 
feared  through  Colombia's  delay  would  slip  away  to  Nicaragua.  The 
United  States  gained  the  concession  that  it  desired;  but  both  nations 
were  criticized  for  the.  unseemly  haste  of  their  actions,  and  President 
Roosevelt  did  not  escape  the  accusation  that  he  had  aided  and  abetted 
the  revolution  in  Panama  to  further  his  country's  welfare. 

Dirt  began  to  fly  on  the  Isthmus  in  the  spring  of  1904;  and  in  1913 
the  first  ship  passed  through  the  waters  of  the  canal.  The  excavation 
The  canal  is  fifty  miles  long,  with  a  channel  ranging  from  300  to 
completed.  i?ooo  feet  wide,  ample  to  accommodate  the  largest  of  the 
world's  ships.  Twelve  locks  lift  the  ships  from  level  to  level.  In  spite 
of  the  fact  that  at  one  time  as  many  as  39,000  people  were  at  work 
on  the  undertaking,  the  heavy  mortality  attending  the  construction  of 
the  Panama  Railroad  in  the  fifties  and  of  the  attempted  French  canal 
in  the  eighties  was  obviated.  The  engineers  in  charge  of  the  work, 
with  Colonel  George  W.  Goethals  of  the  United  States  army  at  their 
head,  demonstrated  the  efficiency  of  modern  methods  of  sanitation  in 
the  elimination  of  disease.  Fever  stricken  and  deadly  fifty  years  ago, 
when  the  railroad  was  put  through,  to-day  the  canal  zone  is  practically 
free  from  fever.  In  the  warfare  on  the  disease-bearing  mosquitoes  the 
swamps  have  been  drained,  the  houses  carefully  screened,  hospitals 
erected,  and  pure  water  secured.  The  estimated  cost  of  the  canal  is 
$375,000,000,  while  in  addition  many  millions  have  been  expended 
upon  the  fortification  of  the  waterway. 

In  1912  Congress  passed  a  law  for  the  government  of  the  canal,  which 

The  question     was  then  rapidly  nearing  completion.     The  act  exempted 

of  tolls  on         the  coastwise  shipping  of  the  United  States,  for  example 

vessels  sailing  from  New  York  to  San  Francisco,  from  the 

payment  of  all  tolls  in  passing  through  the  canal,  and  levied  tolls  on 


THE  UNITED  STATES  IN  WORLD  POLITICS  491 

the  foreign  shipping  of  the  United  States,  for  example,  vessels  passing 
from  New  York  to  the  cities  on  the  west  coast  of  South  America,  and 
on  all  foreign  ships  passing  through  the  canal.  Both  while  the  bill  was 
under  consideration  in  Congress  and  after  it  had  been  enacted  into  law 
by  the  signature  of  President  Taft,  Great  Britain  interposed  vigor 
ous  objection  to  any  difference  of  treatment  in  the  matter  of  tolls 
for  her  vessels  and  those  of  the  United  States.  She  based  her 
objections  on  the  Hay-Pauncefote  treaty  of  1901.  The  preamble 
of  this  treaty  contained  the  words,  "  without  impairing  the  general 
principle  of  neutralization  established  in  article  VIII"  of  the  Clayton- 
Bulwer  treaty  of  1850.  In  other  words,  the  Hay-Pauncefote  treaty  of 
1901  continued  the  general  principle  of  neutrality  of  the  treaty  of  1850, 
in  accordance  with  which  an  Atlantic-Pacific  canal,  wherever  built, 
was  to  be  "open  to  the  citizens  and  subjects  of  the  United  States  and 
Great  Britain  on  equal  terms."  Moreover,  the  British  urged,  in  the 
first  of  the  six  rules  adopted  by  the  United  States  in  the  Hay-Pauncefote 
treaty  "as  the  basis  of  the  neutralization  of  such  ship  canal,"  there 
were  these  words,  "The  canal  shall  be  free  and  open  to  the  vessels  of 
commerce  and  of  war  of  all  nations  observing  these  rules,  on  terms  of 
entire  equality,  so  that  there  shall  be  no  discrimination  against  any 
such  nation,  or  its  citizens  or  subjects,  in  respect  of  the  conditions  or 
charges  of  traffic,  or  otherwise."  For  these  two  reasons  Great  Britain 
•claimed  that  canal  tolls  at  Panama,  imposed  on  the  vessels  of  the 
United  States,  could  not  be  lower  than  those  imposed  on  the  vessels  of 
Great  Britain. 

The  crux  of  the  debate  which  followed  in  the  spring  of  1914,  when 
President  Wilson  asked  Congress  to  repeal  the  toll  exemption  clause 
of  the  law  of  1912,  was  the  meaning  of  the  phrase  "all  The  decision 
nations"  in  the  rule  already  quoted.  The  friends  of  of  Congress. 
discrimination  in  tolls  claimed  that  all  nations  that  were  not  owners 
of  the  canal,  that  is,  all  other  nations  than  the  United  States,  were 
meant,  while  those  who  urged  the  repeal  of  unequal  tolls  insisted  that 
"all  nations"  included  the  United  States.  Congress  took  the  latter 
view  and  repealed  the  discrimination  in  favor  of  her  coastwise  ships, 
though  the  repeal  was  so  worded  as  not  to  "waive  or  impair  aciy  right 
of  the  United  States  under  such  treaties  .  .  .  with  respect  to  the 
sovereignty  over  or  the  ownership,  control  and  management  of  said 
canal  and  the  regulation  of  the  conditions  or  the  charges  of  traffic 
through  the  same,"  so  that  it  is  possible  that  the  question  may  come 
up  again  at  some  future  time.  All  vessels  now  using  the  canal  pay 
the  same  tolls. 
Presidents  Roosevelt,  Taft,  and  Wilson  made  efforts  to  conclude  a, 


492  A  WORLD  POWER 

treaty  with  Colombia  to  compensate  her  for  the  loss  of  her  seceded  dis- 
The  proposal  tr^ct'  Panama.  The  proposal  was  made  before  the  Senate 
of  compen-  of  the  United  States  providing  that  the  United  States  should 
Colombia  not  onty  Pav  to  Colombia  $25,000,000,  but  should  also  ex- 

for  the  loss  press  to  her  regret  for  the  events  of  the  revolution  of 
of  Panama.  £L  .  3  XT  ,  . 

Panama  in  1903.    No  action  was  taken. 

Hardly  had  the  government  completed  its  work  at  Panama  when  it 
embarked  on  the  construction  of  a  huge  trunk  line  railroad  in  Alaska, 
A  govern-  one  thousand  miles  long,  designed  to  open  up  the  resources 
ment  railroad  of  the  territory  to  outside  trade.  It  is  the  first  experi 
ment  on  a  large  scale  of  the  government  ownership  of 
railroads  in  the  United  States.  In  prosecuting  the  undertaking  the 
President  will  employ  army  engineers  and  will  use  the  Panama  canal 
machinery  and  equipment,  while  the  rates  of  traffic  on  the  road,  when 
completed,  will  be  not  only  regulated  but  fixed  by  the  Interstate 
Commerce  Commission. 

The  canal  in  Panama  and  the  railroad  in  Alaska  are  striking  illus 
trations  of  the  change  that  has  come  in  the  last  seventy-five  years 
in  the  attitude  of  the  government  toward  internal  improve- 
doclrine  of™  merits.  In  Jefferson's  time,  when  the  opening  of  the 
public  im-  new  western  frontier  beyond  the  Alleghanies  demon- 
aTtiie'ex^8  strated  the  necessity  of  the  improvement  of  transpor 
tation^  the  tation  facilities  such  as  roads,  bridges,  and  canals,  the 
United  States  at  first  consented  to  undertake  the  work. 
It  then  drew  back  and  the  states  directly  affected  took  up  the  task. 
When  the  states  found  the  difficulties  confronting  them  too  heavy  after 
the  panic  of  1837,  the  national  government  slowly  returned  to  its  origi 
nal  policy,  first  through  grants  of  land  to  the  states  themselves  to  be 
disposed  of  by  them  for  the  support  of  private  companies;  then  by  direct 
gifts  of  land  to  the  companies  engaged  in  making  the  improvements, 
as  in  the  case  of  the  Union  Pacific  railroad;  and  finally,  after  the  Civil 
War,  by  making  many  improvements  itself.  Millions  of  dollars, 
sometimes  hundreds  of  millions,  are  now  expended  by  the  national 
government  every  year  on  rivers,  harbors,  bridges,  public  buildings, 
and  other  improvements. 

The  states  themselves  are  almost  as  lavish  as  the  national  govern- 
State  im-  ment  in  the  support  of  strictly  state  works.  At  the  present 
provements  time  New  York  is  engaged  in  expending  $100,000,000  in 
in  New  York.  jmprovmg  her  canai  system,  and  an  equally  large  sum  in 
the  improvement  of  hundreds  of  miles  of  state  highways. 

Cities,  too,  undertake  mammoth  works,  that  would  have  seemed 
incredible  half  a  century  ago.  New  York  City,  which  is  at  work  on  an 


THE  UNITED   STATES  IN  WORLD   POLITICS  493 

extensive  underground  system  of  transportation  facilities,  which  will 
in  the  end  cost  hundreds  of  millions  of  dollars,  has  just  The  new 
brought  to  completion  an  aqueduct,  which  as  an  engineer-  aqueduct 
ing  triumph  may  almost  be  compared  with  the  Panama  of  New  York 
Canal.  The  canal  at  Panama  is  fifty  miles  long  and  has  cost 
$375,000,000.  The  aqueduct  of  New  York  from  the  Catskill  Moun 
tains  has  cost  $175,000,000,  and  is  more  than  one  hundred  miles 
long.  It  includes  four  reservoirs,  fifty  miles  of  tunneling  through  the 
solid  rock,  fifty-five  miles  of  cut  and  cover  tunneling,  and  ten  miles 
of  steel  pipe  construction.  The  mountain  waters  are  first  gathered  in 
the  Ashokan  reservoir,  twelve  miles  long,  one  mile  wide,  and  in  some 
places  one  hundred  and  ninety  feet  deep,  in  the  construction  of  which 
thirteen  miles  of  railroad  track  were  removed,  thirty  miles  of  highway 
re-located  and  seven  villages  removed.  At  Storm  King  Mountain,  four 
miles  above  West  Point,  the  water  is  plunged  underneath  the  Hudson 
River  in  a  great  tunnel  cut  out  of  the  solid  rock,  reaching  one  thou 
sand  one  hundred  feet  below  the  level  of  the  river.  Thence  south  to 
New  York  City,  through  the  entire  length  of  Manhattan  Island  and 
across  to  Long  Island  the  water  runs  in  the  longest  rock  tunnel  in  the 
world,  in  some  places  hundreds  of  feet  below  the  level  of  the  city.  The 
present  consumption  of  water  in  New  York  City  reaches  500,000,000 
gallons  per  day,  and  the  new  system  furnishes  more  than  double  this 
supply. 

THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE 

With  assumption  of  her  new  role  in  world  politics,  and  with  a  perma 
nent  investment  at  Panama  of  $375,000,000  to  safeguard, 
the  United  States  found  the  Monroe  Doctrine  still  an  im-   portance  of" 
portant  tenet  of  its  national  policy,  though  fraught  with 
increasing  difficulty  of  application. 

Supported  by  the  military  and  naval  power  of  the  United  States, 
the  Monroe  Doctrine  had  proved  successful  in  securing  to  the  southern 
republics  opportunity  to  continue  their  national  develop-  Difficulties  of 
ment  free  from  outside  influence,  at  the  very  time  of  Africa's  application, 
ruthless  partition  and  China's  hardly  less  bitter  fate.  There  were,  how 
ever,  dangers  in  the  vagueness  of  the  doctrine,  and  in  the  invitation  which 
it  seemed  to  extend  to  the  southern  republics  to  be  reckless  in  their 
foreign  relations,  upon  the  almost  certain  knowledge  that  the  United 
States  would  step  in  to  protect  them  from  too  vigorous  action  on  the  part 
of  the  outside  powers.  How  far  to  go  in  awarding  protection,  what  to 
allow  the  nations  of  Europe  to  do  in  South  America  and  what  not  to 
allow  them  to  do,  as  they  seek  redress  for  grievances  from  the  protected 


494  A  WORLD  POWER 

states,  were  perplexing  national  problems.  Extreme  caution  must  also 
be  exercised  by  the  United  States  to  avoid  wounding  the  pride  of  the 
younger  nations,  especially  of  the  three  powers  of  Argentine,  Brazil,  and 
Chile,  the  "A.  B.  C."  powers  of  South  America,  which  are  to-day  strong 
nations.  Bismarck,  the  great  German  statesman,  characterized  the 
Monroe  Doctrine  as  a  piece  of  " international  impertinence";  ex-Presi 
dent  Taft  has  termed  it  "international  philanthropy,"  while  the  South 
American  republics,  since  the  recognition  of  the  independence  of  Panama 
by  the  United  States,  have  regarded  it  with  some  distrust. 
Reservation  ^n  giving  ner  adherence  to  the  principle  of  arbitration 

of  theMon-      promulgated   at   The    Hague,    the    United    States    gave 

notice  to  the  world  that  she  did  not  in  any  way  abandon 
the  Monroe  Doctrine. 

In  1902-1903,  less  than  ten  years  after  the  United  States  had  pro 
tected  her  from  the  aggressions  of  Great  Britain,  Venezuela  was 
Venezuela's  agam  involved  in  difficulties  with  European  powers, 
troubles  Citizens  of  Germany,  Great  Britain,  and  Italy  had  claims 

many?Great     on    ner    ^or    mjuries    which    they    had    received    during 
Britain,  and      revolutions  in  that  country  and  for  deferred  interest  on 

Venezuelan  bonds.  Venezuela  refused  arbitration  in  the 
matter,  and  after  Germany  had  given  formal  notice  to  the  United 
States  that  she  did  not  intend  to  acquire  territory  in  Venezuela  the 
three  powers  joined  in  a  "pacific  blockade"  of  four  Venezuelan  ports, 
including  the  mouth  of  the  Orinoco  River.  The  fleet  of  the  allies  cap 
tured  that  of  Venezuela  and  bombarded  her  coast  in  three  places. 
All  South  America  and  Central  America  were  alarmed,  lest  the  epi 
sode  serve  as  a  precedent  and  financial  intervention  in  American 
affairs  by  European  powers  lead  to  territorial  occupation,  conquest, 
and  the  utter  breaking  down  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine.  Dr.  Luis 
Drago,  Foreign  Minister  in  Argentine,  dispatched  a  note  to  Presi 
dent  Roosevelt  in  which  he  formulated  what  might  be  regarded  as 
an  addition  to  the  Monroe  Doctrine.  He  urged  "that  a  public  debt 
cannot  give  rise  to  the  right  of  intervention,  and  much  less  to  the 
occupation  of  the  soil  of  any  American  nation  by  any  European  power." 
Drago  believed  that  in  making  loans  creditors  took  into  consideration 
the  chances  of  getting  their  money  back  and  made  terms  accordingly; 
he  admitted  that  a  debtor  state  should  pay  its  debts,  but  contended 
that,  guided  by  considerations  of  its  own  honor  and  future  credit,  it 
should  be  allowed  to  pay  these  debts  in  its  own  manner,  free  from 
intimidation  from  outside  powers. 

President  Roosevelt  did  not  accept  the  Drago  Doctrine.  In  a 
message  to  Congress  he  took  the  position  that  the  United  States 


THE  UNITED  STATES  IN  WORLD  POLITICS  495 

would  not  go  to  war  to  prevent  a  European  nation  from  collecting  its 
just  debts  in  South  America,  providing  that  the  punishment  inflicted 
on  the  offending  state  did  "not  take  the  form  of  acqui 
sition  of  territory  on  the  American    continent   or    the    Roosevelt's 
islands   adjacent."     In   accordance    with  this   principle,    rejection  of 
the  United  States  could  not  allow  a  foreign  state  to  en-    Doctrine.0 
force  the  payment  of  its  debts  by  taking  possession  of  a 
South  American  customhouse. 

It  was  the  part  of  wisdom  for  the  United  States  to  formulate  some 
plan  to  secure  the  payment  of  the  debts  and  if  possible  avert  a  crisis. 
After  the  blockade  of  Venezuela  had  gone  on  for  a  year, 
President  Roosevelt  induced  Venezuela  to  come  to  terms, 
and  the  claims  of  the  three  powers  of  Europe  and  of  all    zuelan  ques- 
other   powers   against   Venezuela   were   submitted   to   a    Initiation, 
commission  for  examination,  which  brought  in  a  report 
that  only  one-fifth  of  the  claims  were  genuine  and  that  even  those 
of  the  citizens  of  the  United  States  were  many  times  too  large.     Vene 
zuela  satisfied  her  creditors  in  compliance  with  the  award. 

In  1904,  when  certain  European  powers  were  again  contemplating 
forcible  collection  of  debts,  this  time  from  the  negro  republic  of  Santo 
Domingo,  President  Roosevelt,  fearful  of  the  consequences 
if  the  action  of  the  European  powers  toward  Venezuela 
were  allowed  to  be  repeated  and  thus  to  establish  a  prece-    roe  Doctrine 
dent,  decided,  in  the  name  of  the  United  States,  to  take    DomSgo. 
charge  of  the  finances  of  the  island  till  these  were  straight 
ened  out.     First,  by  a  working  agreement  with  Santo  Domingo,  which 
did  not  require  the  sanction  of  the  Senate  of  the  United  States,  and 
later  by  a  formal  treaty,  the  President  appointed  a  receiver  for  the 
little  island  republic,  under  whom  its  financial  affairs  are  still  adminis 
tered.     Both  the  creditors  of  Santo  Domingo  and  the  island  itself  are 
satisfied,  and  at  the  same  time  the  dangers  of  a  repetition  of  forcible 
collection  of  debts  by  European  powers  are  warded  off. 

The  forcible  collection  of  debts  by  an  outside  nation  was  brought 
forward  by  the  United  States  as  a  topic  for  discussion  at  the  second 
conference  at  The  Hague.     Most  of  the  nations  of  the    The  Ha 
world  subscribed  to  the  rule  there  adopted,  that  armed   ruleonfor- 
force  should  not  be  used  for  the  recovery  of  contract  debts    fectfon°of 
save   when   the    debtor   state   refused   either   to  accept    international 
arbitration  or  to  abide  by  an  award  of  arbitration. 

The  Pan-American  policy  of  President  Taft,  like  that  of  President 
Roosevelt,  was  pitched  on  a  high  plane  of  good  will  and  friendship  to 
all  America.  He  proposed  and  carried  out  the  mediation  of  the 


496  A  WORLD  POWER 

United  States,  Argentine,  and  Brazil,  which  prevented  war  between 
Peru  and  Ecuador,  when  the  opposing  armies  of  these  two  countries 
were  marching  on  one  another.  By  his  kindly  offices 
Doctrine  President  Taf  t  also  prevented  war  between  the  two  island 
under  Presi-  republics  of  Hayti  and  Santo  Domingo,  and  he  composed 
a  civil  uprising  in  Nicaragua.  He  proposed  treaties  with 
the  last  named  republic  and  with  the  neighboring  state  of  Honduras, 
under  which  the  United  States  was  to  assume  the  control  of  the  finances 
of  these  two  states,  after  the  manner  of  the  arrangement  in  Santo 
Domingo  and  for  similar  reasons.  To-day  similar  treaties,  made  under 
President  Wilson  with  Nicaragua  and  Hayti,  are  in  force. 

Following  the  precedent  set  by  President  Roosevelt,  who  had  sent 
his  Secretary  of  State,  Elihu  Root,  to  attend  the  Pan-American  Con- 
American  gress  at  Rio  de  Janeiro>  Brazil,  in  JQ06,  President  Taft 
Secretaries  sent  his  Secretary  of  State,  Philander  C.  Knox,  on  a  long 
America  tour  tnrougn  South  America.  By  their  many  public  ad 

dresses  in  the  various  southern  republics  the  two  Secre 
taries  helped  to  increase  the  growing  spirit  of  good  will  between 
North  America  and  South  America. 

•In  the  summer  of  1911  the  Mexicans  were  in  revolt  against  their 
President  Diaz,  who  had  been  reelected  seven   times   and  was  then 
.         serving  his  thirty-first  year  as  the  head  of  the  republic, 
question  His  rule,  though  long  maintained,  had  been  arbitrary  and 

dent6TafteSi~  extremely  conservative;  the  people  had  been  oppressed, 
taxes  had  been  heavy,  and  the  ownership  of  most  of  the 
land  had  passed  into  the  control  of  a  few  hands.  Diaz  was  at  last 
forced  to  resign  and  to  leave  the  country.  His  successor,  President 
Madero,  stood  for  democratic  views,  for  the  distribution  of  the  land 
and  the  extension  of  privileges  to  the -people;  but  his  hand  was  not 
strong  enough  to  bring  peace,  and  his  two  short  years  of  rule  were 
harassed  by  constant  uprisings  of  the  conservative  classes.  As  the 
investments  of  the  citizens  of  the  United  States  in  the  mines,  railroads, 
waterworks,  and  other  enterprises  in  Mexico,  amounting,  it  was  esti 
mated,  to  $1,000,000,000,  were  seriously  affected  by  the  continued 
strife,  pressure  on  President  Taft  for  armed  intervention  in  Mexico  was 
strong.  Such  a  course  would  have  meant  war  on  an  unfortunate  neigh 
bor,  with  all  its  attendant  expense  and  horror,  and  the  impairment  of 
that  peace  and  friendship  which  it  was  the  ideal  of  the  highest  states 
manship  of  the  United  States  to  cultivate  with  the  sister  republics  of 
America.  President  Taft  mobilized  the  army  of  the  United  States  on 
the  Texas  border  and  patrolled  the  boundary  line  to  insure  strict 
neutrality,  but  with  commendable  firmness  he  did  not  cross  the  line. 


THE  UNITED  STATES  IN  WORLD  POLITICS  497 

Under  President  Wilson  the  Mexican  situation  reached  a  more 
acute  phase.  In  the  very  last  days  of  the  Taft  administration  Presi 
dent  Madero  was  assassinated  in  the  city  of  Mexico  and  . 
General  Huerta  was  installed  in  his  place.  Violent  civil  crisis  under0 
strife  followed.  The  charge  was  made  that  Huerta  was 
implicated  in  the  killing  of  his  predecessor,  and  Wilson 
refused  to  recognize  as  President  of  the  sister  republic  one  who  had 
attained  his  position  by  assassination,  although  recognition  was 
awarded  him  by  the  leading  powers  of  Europe.  Resentment  among 
the  conservatives  of  Mexico  at  this  stand  of  President  Wilson  waxed 
hotter  every  day.  On  April  9,  1914,  United  States  sailors  were  ar 
rested  without  justification  at  Tampico,  Mexico,  by  the  soldiers  of 
General  Huerta.  The  latter  ordered  the  release  of  the  prisoners  within 
an  hour  and  sent  an  apology  and  even  an  expression  of  regret  over  the 
incident  to  the  authorities  of  the  United  States;  but  Admiral  Mayo, 
in  command  of  the  United  States  fleet  in  the  harbor  of  Tampico,  be 
lieved  that  the  honor  and  the  dignity  of  his  country  were  not  satisfied, 
and  demanded  from  the  Mexicans  a  salute  of  twenty-one  guns  to  the 
United  States  flag.  This  Huerta  refused.  Citizens  of  the  United  States 
had  suffered  various  indignities  in  Mexico,  and  the  nation  was  begin 
ning  to  chafe  somewhat  under  President  Wilson's  conservative  policy 
of  u  watchful  waiting."  The  President  at  last  decided  upon  a  display 
of  force  in  Mexico  and  with  the  support  of  Congress  landed  an  army 
in  Vera  Cruz,  Mexico,  to  compel  Huerta  to  salute  the  flag.  A  score 
of  the  landing  forces  and  many  more  Mexicans  were  killed,  and  war 
between  the  United  States  and  Mexico  seemed  certain. 

At  this  point  the  value  of  Pan-Americanism  was  demonstrated. 
Argentine,  Brazil,  and  Chile  proposed  mediation  in  the  crisis  between 
the  hostile  states,  and  their  good  offices  were  accepted.  "A.  B.  c." 
The  ambassadors  at  Washington  from  the  three  South  mediation. 
American  republics  met  with  the  representatives  of  the  United  States 
and  Mexico  at  Niagara  Falls  in  Canada  and  after  some  weeks  of 
conference  reached  an  agreement,  looking  to  the  adjustment  of  the 
difficulties,  which  was  accepted  by  both  parties.  This  among  other 
things  involved  the  retirement  of  Huerta.  On  July  15,  1914,  Huerta 
resigned  the  Mexican  presidency  and  departed  from  Mexico.  Later 
in  the  year  the  United  States  withdrew  its  forces  from  Vera  Cruz; 
but  civil  war  still  continued.  The  joint  action  of  the  South  Ameri 
can  republics  at  Niagara,  in  line  with  the  precedent  in  the  previous 
administration,  greatly  strengthened  the  Pan-American  movement. 
Finally,  toward  the  end  of  1915,  President  Wilson  interfered  among 
the  contending  factions  by  officially  recognizing  General  Carranza, 


498  A  WORLD  POWER 

as  the  rightful  President  of  Mexico  and  other  nations    followed  his 
example. 

The  growing  national  power  of  Argentine,  Brazil,  and  Chile,  and  the 
increasing  frequency  of  united  action  by  the  United  States  and  the 
other  American  republics  give  emphasis  to  the  proposal  that  the  three 
large  southern  republics,  if  not  all,  be  associated  with  the  United  States 
in  support  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine.  Such  a  united  representation  in 
any  crisis  would  render  the  Doctrine  more  respected  abroad  and  more 
popular  on  the  American  continent. 

In  1916,  after  Villa,  the  leader  of  a  faction  in  Mexico,  with  a  band 
United  States  °^  followers  had  crossed  the  border  into  New  Mexico  and 
troops  in  shot  to  death  a  number  of  American  citizens,  General 

Pershing  was  sent  into  Mexico  with  a  division  of  soldiers 
to  punish  the  outlaws.  The  bandit  was  not  captured,  but  the  outrages 
on  the  border  ceased. 

THE   FAR  EAST 

In  1907,  President  Roosevelt  sent  a  fleet  of  sixteen  battleships  on  a 

voyage  around  the  world.     They  passed  through  the  Straits  of  Magel- 

Ian  and  stopped  at  San  Francisco,  Honolulu,  and  Manila, 

the  fleet  and  at  ports  in  Japan,  China,  and  Australia,  and  returned 

wo°ridd  the  home  through  the  Suez  Canal  and  the  Mediterranean  Sea, 
visiting  the  leading  countries  of  southern  and  central 
Europe.  Though  forty  thousand  miles  were  covered,  not  a  ship  was 
disabled,  and  the  international  prestige  of  the  navy  of  the  United  States 
was  greatly  enhanced. 

The  advantage  of  having  troops  in  the  Philippines  to  protect  the 
eastern  interests  of  the  United  States  was  demonstrated  in  difficulties 
The  "  Open  which  arose  with  the  Chinese.  The  traditional  f riend- 
Door"in  ship  of  the  United  States  for  China  was  tested  on  the 
occasion  of  the  " Boxer"  rebellion  in  China  in  1900,  which 
was  an  uprising  of  certain  warlike  Chinese  societies  against  the  for 
eigners  in  their  midst.  Many  Europeans  and  some  Americans  were 
massacred.  In  the  national  capital,  Peking,  the  foreign  legations 
were  besieged  by  regular  armed  forces  of  the  Chinese.  When  the 
British,  German,  Italian,  Russian,  French,  Austrian,  Japanese,  and 
American  soldiers  at  last  succeeded  in  putting  down  the  uprising, 
John  Hay,  the  Secretary  of  State,  made  energetic  efforts  to  prevent 
the  European  powers  from  disregarding  the  principle  of  the  "open 
door"  in  China,  that  is,  from  taking,  each  one  for  itself,  a  "sphere 
of  influence"  in  China,  or  in  other  words  appropriating  a  section  of 
the  country  in  which  each  might  enjoy  rights  superior  to  those  of 
other  nations.  Hay  believed  in  equal  chances  of  trade  to  all  for- 


THE  UNITED   STATES  IN  WORLD   POLITICS  499 

eigners  in  China  and  special  privileges  to  none,  and  by  skillful  di 
plomacy  he  carried  his  point.  As  indemnity  for  the  destruction  of 
the  life  and  the  property  of  the  foreigners  China  agreed  to  pay  to  the 
powers  $300,000,000.  The  $24,000,000,  which  was  the  share  of  the 
United  States  in  this  vast  sum,  was  so  far  in  excess  of  her  actual  losses 
that  she  returned  to  China  $13,000,000.  At  this  exhibition  of  good  will 
the  government  of  China  was  moved  to  make  use  of  the  unique  bene 
faction  in  sending  native  students  to  the  United  States  for  education, 
and  to-day,  through  these  funds,  hundreds  of  Chinese  boys  and  girls 
are  in  attendance  at  American  schools  and  colleges.  A  more  effective 
means  of  promoting  international  good  will  could  hardly  be  devised. 

"Dollar  diplomacy,"  by  which  is  meant  the  endeavor  of  diplomatic 
officials  to  advance  the  private  commercial  interests  of  their  country 
men,  was  resorted  to  by  the  Taft  administration  to  « Dollar  di- 
retrieve  the  declining  fortunes  of  American  commerce  in  P^macy-" 
China.  President  Taft  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the  greater  pros 
perity  of  the  foreign  commerce  of  other  nations  with  that  kingdom  was 
in  part  due  to  the  loans  which  the  citizens  of  those  countries  made  to 
China.  Conditions  were  in  many  cases  attached  to  such  loans,  as,  for 
instance,  that  the  money  loaned  must  be  expended  in  the  purchase  of 
commodities  from  the  country  whence  came  the  loan.  When  in  1909 
British,  French,  and  German  bankers  signed  an  agreement  to  finance 
the  construction  of  an  important  Chinese  railroad,  President  Taft,  by 
direct  personal  application  to  the  Chinese  regent,  secured  to  American 
bankers  the  right  to  participate  in  the  loan.  Emboldened  by  this 
success,  the  administration  then  embarked  on  three  other  policies  which 
were  not  so  successful.  First,  Taft  proposed  to  the  nations  of  the 
world  to  neutralize  the  railways  of  Manchuria  and  save  them  to  China 
from  outside  spoliation;  no  nation  accepted  the  proposal  and  out  of 
resentment  Japan  and  Russia,  hostile  to  China's  best  interests  and 
believing  that  Manchuria  was  their  sphere  of  influence,  drew  closer 
together  for  mutual  protection  of  their  interests  in  China.  Second, 
the  United  States  proposed  the  building  of  a  railroad  in  Manchuria  by 
an  international  syndicate,  but  no  other  power  seconded  the  proposal. 
Third,  the  Americans  consented  to  participate  with  the  "six  power 
group"  in  lending  $300,000,000  to  the  new  republic  of  China  which  was 
set  up  in  1912.  Conditions  were  stipulated  concerning  the  use  of  the 
money  and  the  manner  in  which  the  revenue  should  be  raised  in 
China  to  pay  the  loan;  one  power  even  laid  it  down  that  China  must 
use  no  part  of  the  $300,000,000  in  building  railroads  within  her  ter 
ritory,  and  another  that  she  must  not  expend  any  of  the  money  on  her 
army.  China  rejected  the  conditions  as  an  infringement  upon  her 


500  A  WORLD  POWER 

sovereignty,  but  again  asked  the  six  powers  for  a  loan  of  $125,000,000. 
While  the  negotiations  over  the  new  proposal  were  going  on,  President 
Taf  t's  term  of  office  expired,  and  one  of  the  first  acts  of  President  Wilson 
was  to  withdraw  the  United  States  from  the  six  power  group.  The 
new  President  did  not  believe,  with  his  predecessor,  that  the  diplomatic 
agencies  of  the  government  of  the  United  States  should  be  used  to 
further  private  commercial  interests.  The  new  administration  in 
Washington  showed  its  friendliness,  however,  to  the  Chinese  by 
recognizing  the  new  republic  which  they  had  formed,  as  the  national 
government  of  China. 

As  in  the  Caroline  affair  in  the  middle  of  the  century  and  in  the 
trouble  with  Italy  in  Benjamin  Harrison's  administration,  a  state's 
Trouble  action  disturbed  the  cordial  relations  of  the  United  States 

with  japan.  with  a  foreign  government  in  Roosevelt's  and  again  in 
Wilson's  administration.  The  legislature  of  the  state  of  Califor 
nia,  where  many  Japanese  were  settled,  proposed  to  pass  a  law  for 
bidding  the  Japanese  to  attend  the  public  schools  with  the  white 
children  of  that  state  and  forcing  them  to  attend  separate  schools. 
Japan  was  incensed  at  the  seeming  disrespect  to  her  national  dignity, 
and  claimed  that  the  proposed  legislation  was  contrary  to  her  treaty 
rights  in  the  United  States.  Without  committing  himself  on  the  wis 
dom  or  the  legality  of  California's  step,  President  Roosevelt  appealed 
to  the  state  to  desist  before  she  involve  the  entire  nation  in  a  serious 
international  crisis  and  possible  war,  and  the  law  was  not  passed.  In 
1913  the  same  state  again  brought  the  nation  into  difficulty;  and  this 
time,  in  spite  of  the  protests  of  the  administration  in  Washington,  she 
enacted  a  law  highly  obnoxious  to  the  Japanese.  She  forbade  aliens, 
who  were  not  eligible  to  United  States  citizenship,  to  own  land  within 
her  borders  for  certain  agricultural  purposes,  and  thereby  she  debarred 
the  Japanese  among  other  peoples,  without  specifying  them  as  a  nation. 
The  attempt  has  thus  far  failed  to  reach  a  solution  of  the  difficulties 
of  the  two  nations  by  the  negotiation  of  a  new  treaty  with  Japan. 
Anew  Clashes  of  authority  between  the  nation  and  the  states, 

treaty  in  the  conduct  of  the  foreign  affairs  of  the  United  States, 

projected.  w^  probably  persist  in  some  form  so  long  as  the  states 
have  the  power  of  alienating  foreign  governments  beyond  the  power  of 
the  federal  government  to  force  them  to  desist. 


THE  UNITED  STATES  IN  WORLD  POLITICS  501 


GENERAL  REFERENCES 

H.  CROLY,  Marcus  Alonzo  Hanna;  BEARD,  Contemporary  American  History;  E. 
STANWOOD,  Presidency,  1897-1909;  LATANE,  World  Power. 

SPECIAL  TOPICS 

1.  THE  PHILIPPINE  ISLANDS.     LATANE,  World  Power,  82-100,  and  153-175;  D.  C. 
WORCESTER,  Philippines,  Past  and  Present;   H.  P.  WILLIS,  Philippine  Problem;   A. 
IRELAND,  Eastern  Tropics,  186-259;  SPARKS,  Expansion,  439-452. 

2.  INTERNATIONAL  ARBITRATION.    LATANE,  World  Power,  242-255;  A.  P.  HIGGINS, 
Hague  Peace  Conferences;  BARONESS  VON  SUTTNER,  Lay  Down  Your  Arms;  I.  S.  BLOCH, 
Future  of  War. 

3.  PANAMA  CANAL.     LATANE,  World  Power,  204-224;   J.  BRYCE,  South  America, 
1-36;  Epochs,  X,  169-176;   C.  H.  A.  FORBES,  Panama  Canal  Conflict;  C.  F.  ADAMS, 
Panama  Canal  Zone. 

4.  THE    MONROE    DOCTRINE    SINCE    1898.    LATANE,    World   Power,    255-269; 
E.  ROOT,  Speeches  in  South  America;  International  Relations  of  the  United  States,  The 
American  Academy  of  Political  and  Social  Science,  1914. 

ILLUSTRATIVE   MATERIAL 

F.  P.  DUNNE,  Mr.  Dooley  in  Peace  and  War,  and  Mr.  Dooley  in  the  Hearts  of  His 
Countrymen. 

SUGGESTIVE  QUESTIONS 

What  were  the  leading  issues  before  the  people  in  the  presidential  campaigns  of  1900, 
1904,  1908,  1912,  and  1916?  Why  in  some  instances  is  a  joint  resolution  of  Congress 
preferable  to  a  treaty,  as  a  method  of  territorial  annexation?  Characterize  and  distin 
guish  the  new  eras  in  national  life  associated  with  the  presidential  administrations  ol 
Washington,  Jefferson,  Jackson,  Lincoln,  and  McKinley.  Compare  the  working  of 
British  colonial  administration  before  1776  with  the  working  of  the  colonial  adminis 
tration  of  the  United  States  after  1898.  Make  a  list  of  the  important  international 
arbitrations  in  which  the  United  States  was  concerned,  1789-1915.  What  are  the 
advantages  of  arbitration  over  war?  Distinguish  between  the  making  of  a  treaty  and 
arbitration.  Make  a  list  of  the  leading  treaties  of  the  United  States,  1783-1915. 
Sketch  the  history  of  the  Atlantic-Pacific  canal  project,  1846-1901.  Give  an  estimate 
of  the  achievements  of  the  United  States  in  the  tropics.  Give  a  brief  history  of  in 
ternal  improvements  in  the  United  States.  What  have  been  the  greatest  achieve 
ments  of  Pan-Americanism  since  1900?  Why  are  the  South  American  states  suspicious 
of  the  Monroe  Doctrine? 


CHAPTER   XXIX 
PROGRESSIVE   DEMOCRACY 

PROSPERITY 

THE  panics  of  1837,  1857,  and  1873  had  each  been  followed  more 
or  less  closely  by  periods  of  prosperity,  and  the  panic  of  1893  was  no 
A"twobil-  exception  to  the  rule.  Both  prices  and  wages  were  high 
lion  dollar  "  and  rapidly  advancing  in  the  administrations  of  McKinley 

and  Roosevelt  down  to  1907.  In  1906  the  mines  of  the 
country  produced  $94,000,000  worth  of  gold  as  against  $46,000,000 
in  1860,  25,000,000  tons  of  pig  iron  as  against  820,000  tons  in  1860, 
and  370,000,000  tons  of  coal  as  against  13,000,000  tons  in  1860. 
The  corn  crop  of  839,000,000  bushels  in  1860  reached  2,900,000,000  in 
1906,  while  in  the  same  interval  the  wheat  crop  increased  from  173,- 
000,000  bushels  to  735,000,000  bushels.  The  " billion  dollar"  country 
of  the  late  eighties,  as  measured  by  the  appropriations  of  Congress,  was 
a  "two  billion  dollar"  country  by  the  time  Roosevelt  left  office. 

The  visitation  of  financial  disaster  which  seems  fated  to  recur  at 
regular  intervals  of  about  twenty  years,  came  again  in  1907,  which, 
The  financial  like  the  years  l837>  1857,  1873,  and  1893,  was  a  year  of 
panic  of  widespread  financial  ruin.  The  trouble  began  in  the 

summer  of  that  year  with  the  failure  of  several  large  manu 
facturing  establishments  and  banks  in  New  York  City  in  the  last  week 
of  October.  Commercial  failures  were  numerous  and  widespread 
throughout  the  country,  but  the  nation's  prosperity  rested  on  great 
natural  resources  and  improvement  soon  set  in. 

In  the  last  half  century  the  unconquerable  prosperity  of  the  United 
States  has  received  numerous  demonstrations  in  the  swift  recovery  of 

different  cities  and  sections  from  terrible  disasters  that  have 
recovery  of  befallen  them.  On  October  8,  1871,  the  city  of  Chicago 
citiesen  was  visite<i  by  a  conflagration  which  burned  more  than 

Chicago  and      two  thousand  acres  of  city  blocks  before  it  was  checked. 

Eighteen  thousand  buildings,  including  a  large  part  of  the 
business  section  of  the  city,  were  reduced  to  ashes,  two  hundred  mil 
lion  dollars'  worth  of  property  was  destroyed,  two  hundred  and  fifty 
lives  were  lost,  and  one  hundred  thousand  people  were  rendered  Lome- 

502 


PROGRESSIVE  DEMOCRACY  5°3 

less.  The  city,  *he  motto  of  which  was,  "I  will,"  rose  from  the  ruins 
greater  and  better,  until  to-day  Chicago  ranks  next  after  New  York 
as  the  most  populous,  the  wealthiest,  and  the  most  influential  city  in 
the  country.  The  next  year  a  disastrous  fire  destroyed  sixty-five 
acres  of  buildings  in  the  wholesale  district  of  Boston,  inflicting  a  loss 
which  reached  eighty  millions  of  dollars. 

In  1886  Charleston,  South  Carolina,  was  visited  by  a  destructive 
earthquake.  In  1889  Johnstown,  Pennsylvania,  was  wiped  out  by  a 
flood,  in  which  two  hundred  lives  were  lost  and  property  other 
destroyed  to  the  value  of  $10,000,000.  In  1900  a  tidal  disasters> 
wave  destroyed  a  large  part  of  Galveston,  Texas.  In  1904  much  of 
the  business  section  of  Baltimore,  Maryland,  was  burned  and  more 
than  $50,000,000  worth  of  property  destroyed.  Yet  all  these  afflicted 
sections  repaired  the  ravages  in  a  short  time  and  entered  upon  new 
prosperity.  In  1906  in  San  Francisco,  California,  from  $350,000,000 
to  $500,000,000  worth  of  property  was  destroyed  by  earthquake  and 
fire  together.  Three-fourths  of  the  city  was  ruined  and  300,000  people 
rendered  homeless;  but  within  three  years  the  city  was  practically 
rebuilt,  and  in  1915  received  hundreds  of  thousands  of  visitors  at  a 
world's  fair,  held  to  celebrate  the  completion  of  the  Panama  Canal. 

An  unfailing  sign  of  good  times  was  the  arrival  in  the  United  States 
in  1905  of  over  1,000,000  immigrants,  who  invariably  come  to  the 
country  in  large  numbers  in  times  of  prosperity,  and  Heavy 
in  smaller  numbers  during  adversity.  The  number  of  immigration, 
immigrants  did  not  reach  100,000  in  any  year  till  1842;  on  the  wave 
of  the  country's  prosperity  it  mounted  to  400,000  in  1854,  with  the 
panic  of  1857  and  the  Civil  War  fell  as  low  as  89,000,  then  rose  again 
to  460,000  in  1873.  Financial  depression  brought  the  number  down 
to  138,000  in  1878,  good  times  raised  it  to  800,000  by  1882,  the  next 
financial  panic  reduced  it  to  230,000  in  1898,  after  which  it  rapidly 
increased.  The  1,000,000  mark  was  reached  in  1905,  1906,  and  1907, 
and  again  in  1910  and  1913.  In  these  later  days  it  is  the  southern 
instead  of  the  northern  countries  of  Europe  as  in  the  middle  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  that  are  the  chief  sources  of  immigration. 

In  1900  there  were  over  10,000,000  foreign  born  in  the  United 
States,  or  thirteen  per  cent  of  the  total  population.     Basing  its  figures 
on  the  reports  of  the  census  bureau,  the  National  Geo-    Foreign 
graphic  Magazine  states  that  there  are  now  in  the  United    P°Pulation. 
States  13,000,000  foreign  born,  which,  including  18,000,000  born  in 
this  country,  one  or  both  of  whose  parents  were  born  abroad,  brings 
up  to  31,000,000  the  number  of  those  in  the  United  States  whose 
parentage  is  foreign.    One-third  of  the  people   of   the  country  arc 


5C4  A  WORLD  POWER 

foreign  or  have  parents  who  were  born  abroad.  The  city  with  the 
largest  percentage  of  foreign  born  is  Fall  River,  Massachusetts,  with 
42.7  per  cent;  Lowell,  Massachusetts,  is  second  with  40.9  per  cent, 
New  York  third  with  40.8  per  cent  or  1,944,357,  Boston,  fourth,  Pat- 
erson,  New  Jersey,  fifth,  Chicago  sixth,  and  Bridgeport,  Connecticut, 
seventh. 

When  the  immigrants  arrive  their  standing  under  the  law  is  that 
of  aliens.     The  majority  of  them,  however,  seek  naturalization  and 
Aliens  and        become  full  American  citizens.    When  they  have  taken  out 
naturalized       their  first  papers  they  are  liable  to  military  service  for  the 
United  States  in  time  of  war;  in  general  all  aliens  enjoy  the 
right  of  protection  in  person  and  property  against  mobs  and  insurrec 
tion,  and  they  may  bring  suit  in  the  federal 
and  state  courts  like  ordinary  citizens;  in 
most  states  they  enjoy  the  right  to  hold 
land,  though  in  some  states  this  is  denied. 
The  right  to  vote,  which  is  a  matter  deter 
mined  by  state  and  not  by  federal  law, 
is  in  most  states  given  to  immigrants  only 
after  they  become  citizens  of  the  United 
States,  though  a  few  states  allow  aliens 
to  vote  if  they  have  declared  their  inten 
tion  of  becoming  citizens  in  accordance 
PER  CENT  DISTRIBUTION  OF  FOR-     with  the  terms  of  the  national  law  on  the 
EIGN-BORN  POPULATION,   1910.     subject.     While  the  right  to  vote  is  be- 
TOTAL  FOREIGN-BORN,  13,515,-     stowed  by  state  law,  naturalization,  or 

oo/r  * 

the  granting  of  full  citizenship,  is  regu 
lated  by  national  law.  The  requirement  of  a  residence  of  five  years  in 
the  country  by  a  foreigner  before  naturalization  has  not  been  changed 
since  the  days  of  President  Jefferson.  Naturalization  papers  are 
to  be  secured  in  the  district  and  circuit  courts  of  the  United  States 
and  in  certain  state  and  territorial  courts.  Only  " white  persons" 
and  persons  of  "African  descent"  may  be  naturalized;  those  of  other 
races,  and  alien  enemies,  polygamists,  and  disbelievers  in  organized 
government  are  excluded.  The  applicant  for  citizenship  must  have 
"behaved  as  a  person  of  good  moral  character"  and  must  be  "attached 
to  the  principles  of  the  Constitution  and  well  disposed  to  the  good 
order  and  happiness  of  the  same."  All  applicants  must  bet  able  to 
read  and  write  the  English  language.  No  naturalized  citizen  may  be 
either  President  or  Vice  President,  but  in  other  respects  the  natural- 
born  and  the  naturalized  citizens  are  on  a  basis  of  civil  and  political 
equality. 


PROGRESSIVE  DEMOCRACY  505 

That  immigrants  contribute  their  part  to  the  development  of  the 
country  is  evident  in  this  industrial  age  as  well  as  in  the  days  of  frontier 
building  and  of  war;  and  they  also  share  in  her  wonderful  The  contri_ 
prosperity.  A  few  examples  may  be  enumerated  of  men  butions  of 
who  have  arrived  in  the  country  without  means  and  have  S^efcSfus- 
succeeded  in  personifying  in  their  individual  experiences  trial  life  of 
the  marvelous  progress  of  the  nation  from  hardship  and 
struggle  to  affluence.  Andrew  Carnegie,  who  has  amassed  hundreds 
of  millions  in  the  steel  industry,  came  to  America  as  a  poor  boy  from 
Scotland.  Patrick  Cudahy,  head  of  a  large  meat  packing  establish 
ment,  James  McCutcheon,  James  McCreery,  Hugh  O'Neil,  and 
Alexander  T.  Stewart,  prominent  merchants  of  New  York,  were  poor 
immigrants  from  Ireland;  Frederick  Weyerheuser  and  Herman  Siel- 
cken,  lumber  and  coffee  merchants  respectively,  were  poor  immigrant 
boys  from  Germany;  Henry  T.  Oxnard,  head  of  the  beet  sugar  industry, 
came  from  France,  and  Joseph  Di  Gorgio,  head  of  the  banana  industry, 
and  Simone  Saitta,  prominent  in  the  lemon  industry,  from  Italy,  all 
without  money  but  with  the  will  to  succeed.  The  new  citizens  have 
also  achieved  success  in  other  than  commercial  lines.  Knute  Nelson, 
United  States  Senator  from  Minnesota,  was  born  in  Norway,  Jacob 
A.  Riis,  writer  and  reformer,  in  Denmark,  Michael  Pupin,  whose 
electrical  experiments  have  contributed  greatly  to  the  success  of  the 
telegraph  and  the  telephone,  in  Servia,  Dr.  A.  A.  Michelson,  winner 
of  the  Nobel  Prize  for  scientific  work,  in  Germany,  Samuel  A.  Gompers, 
President  of  the  American  Federation  of  Labor,  in  England,  and  Patrick 
Collins,  ex-Mayor  of  Boston,  in  Ireland. 

The  reconstructed  Southern  States,  after  the  first  years  of  struggle 
with  poverty  and  readjustment  to  new  industrial  conditions,  have  won 
for  themselves  a  share  in  the  prevailing  prosperity.  In  The  progress 
these  states,  including  West  Virginia,  from  1880  to  1910  of  the  ^  New 
population  increased  from  13,000,000  to  23,000,000,  the  out  ' 
capital  invested  in  manufacturing  from  $147,000,000  in  1880  to  $1,000,- 
000,000  in  1900,  the  cotton  crop  from  5,700,000  bales  in  1880  to 
15,000,000  bales  in  1911,  and  the  amount  of  cotton  consumed  in  the 
Southern  mills  from  320,000  bales  in  1880  to  2,300,000  bales  in  1910. 
In  the  face  of  this  marvelous  record  Southerners  themselves  are  gen 
erally  agreed  that  the  destruction  of  slavery  was  in  the  end  conducive 
to  prosperity.  The  Civil  War  not  only  emancipated  the  blacks  but  also 
gave  a  chance  to  the  poor  whites,  from  whose  ranks  come  many  of 
the  leaders  of  the  "New  South."  In  a  typical  manufacturing  center 
of  the  South,  Birmingham,  Alabama,  the  increase  in  population, 
1900-1910,  was  from  38,000  to  132,000,  or  two  hundred  and  forty- 


5o6  A  WORLD  POWER 

five  per  cent.     Nashville,  Tennessee,  numbered  110,000  in  1910,  Ne\v 
Orleans  340,000. 

The  negro  situation  in  the  South  has  worked  out  differently  from 
what  was  expected  when  Congress  provided  for  the  welfare  of  the 
The  th  blacks  by  constitutional  amendment.  Twenty-five  years 
em  negroes  after  the  withdrawal  of  the  Federal  troops  from  the  South 
the  'suffrage.  in  l877>  wnich  date  has  been  accepted  as  marking  the  end 
of  Reconstruction,  political  conditions  had  become  such  as 
would  have  aroused  consternation  in  the  North  in  the  days  immedi 
ately  after  the  war,  for  the  ex-slaves  had  practically  lost  the  ballot. 
On  this  point  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  has  been 
effectively  nullified  by  the  laws  of  the  Southern  States  themselves,  and 
it  is  a  phenomenon  of  interest  that  few  white  people  either  in  the 
North  or  in  the  South  offer  serious  objection.  In  1877  it  seemed 
that  everything  possible  had  been  done  to  safeguard  the  negroes'  lately 
acquired  right  of  suffrage.  In  their  favor  was  the  fifteenth  amendment 
to  the  Constitution,  declaring,  "The  right  of  the  citizens  of  the  United 
States  to  vote  shall  not  be  denied  or  abridged  by  the  United  States,  or 
by  any  state,  on  account  of  race,  color,  or  previous  condition  of 
servitude."  Practically  the  same  provision  was  in  the  new  constitutions 
of  the  Southern  States,  and  Congress  passed  various  laws  to  secure  the 
same  right.  Yet  one  thing  was  lacking  to  render  negro  suffrage  a  suc 
cess,  and  that  was  the  cordial  assent  and  sympathy  of  the  white  people 
of  the  Southern  States.  The  spirit  of  the  Ku  Klux  Klan,  if  not  the 
society  itself,  survived,  and  within  ten  years  after  the  troops  of  the 
United  States  had  disappeared  from  their  midst  the  Southerners 
began  to  register  their  opposition  by  formal  changes  in  their  state 
constitutions.  Very  rigid  tax,  property,  and  educational  qualifications 
for  the  suffrage  were  imposed,  forbidding  the  vote  to  all  unable  to 
meet  the  qualifications;  at  the  same  time,  in  order  not  to  bar  out  the 
whites  by  these  restrictions,  exceptions  were  made  in  some  states  in 
favor  of  all  who  had  grandfathers  able  to  vote  before  the  adoption 
of  the  fourteenth  amendment  or  some  other  date  immediately 
after  the  close  of  the  Civil  War,  while  in  other  states  the  rigor  of  the 
law  was  informally  lightened  by  the  registration  and  election  officials, 
who  purposely  asked  difficult  questions  of  the  ignorant  blacks  seeking 
to  qualify  for  the  vote  under  the  law  and  easy  questions  of  the  ignorant 
whites.  The  Australian  ballot  system,  too,  has  served  as  an  additional 
barrier  against  the  ignorant  black  vote.  The  "grandfather  clause" 
of  Maryland  and  of  Oklahoma  was  declared  unconstitutional  by  the 
Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  in  1915. 

Meanwhile  industrial  education  has   been  hailed  as  a  far  more 


PROGRESSIVE  DEMOCRACY  507 

effective  solution  of  the  negro  problem  than  the  suffrage.     Already 
much  has  been  accomplished  along  this  line  in  the  Tuske-    Indust . 
gee,  Hampton,  and  other  Southern  schools  for  the  blacks,    education 
At  the  present  time  over  fifty  per  cent  of  the  negroes  of    Jjf  |£®g 
the  United  States  can  read  and  write. 

The  West  is  no  longer  merely  a  land  of  ranches,  farms,  and  mines. 
It  contains  great  cities.  The  older  cities  of  the  middle  West  —  Chicago 
with  a  population  of  2,185,000  in  1910,  St.  Louis  with  687,-  Tfae 
ooo,  Minneapolis  with  301,000,  St.  Paul  with  214,000,  Of  the  ™ 
and  Denver  with  213,000  —  have  made  rapid  advances, 
The  progress  of  the  cities  of  the  Pacific  coast  presents 
an  astonishing  record.  According  to  the  bureau  of  the  census,  three 
cities  of  California  —  San  Francisco,  Los  Angeles,  and  Oakland  — 
together  numbered  in  1910  almost  1,000,000;  three  cities  of  Wash 
ington  —  Seattle  with  300,000,  Spokane  with  100,000,  and  Tacoma 
with  100,000  —  had  a  total  of  nearly  500,000.  Portland,  Oregon,  had  a 
population  of  over  200,000.  The  per  cent  of  increase  in  population, 
1900-1910,  was  well  above  one  hundred  per  cent  in  all  these  Pacific 
cities  except  one,  and  in  one,  Los  Angeles,  it  was  over  two  hundred 
per  cent.  Although  California  and  Oregon  as  states  of  the  Union 
are  scarcely  fifty  years  old,  and  although  Washington  is  still  younger, 
the  three  states  together  have  nine  cities  above  the  one  hundred 
thousand  mark.  The  growth  of  these  centers  of  population  portends 
the  large  part  which  the  Pacific  coast  is  destined  to  play  in  the 
commercial  and  economic  life  of  the  nation. 

The  census  of  1910  showed  not  only  extraordinary  progress  in  the 
southern  and  western  cities,  but  also  in  the  more  eastern  cities  and  in 
the  nation  as  a  whole.  Toledo,  Buffalo,  Detroit,  and  The  census 
Cleveland,  centers  of  the  new  automobile  industry  and  of  191°- 
of  the  ever-growing  Lake  trade,  increased  respectively,  1900-1910, 
from  130,000  to  168,000,  from  350,000  to  420,000,  from  285,000 
to  465,000,  and  from  380,000  to  560,000,  while  Cincinnati  and 
Pittsburg,  on  the  Ohio  River,  reached  in  1910,  the  one  360,000  and  the 
other  530,000.  Thus  the  Lake  cities,  including  Chicago,  whose  boom 
did  not  come  till  after  the  completion  of  the  Erie  Canal,  have  made 
rapid  strides  in  overtaking  their  old  rivals  on  the  Ohio  and  the  Missis 
sippi.  Baltimore,  which  made  a  swift  recovery  from  the  conflagra 
tion  of  1904,  numbered  560,0.00  in  1910,  Philadelphia,  1,550,000,  Boston 
670,000,  and  Greater  New  York,  4,765,000.  The  country  as  a  whole, 
which  had  3,900,000  inhabitants  in  1790,  5,000,000  in  1800,  and  31,000,- 
ooo  in  1860,  possessed  a  population  of  91,000,000  in  1910.  The  rate  of 
increase  is  enormous,  though  it  is  somewhat  below  that  of  the  colonial 


508 


A  WORLD  POWER 


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00          1810           1820          I83O          1840          I860          I860          1870          1880          1890          1900          1910 
YEAR 

PROGRESSIVE  DEMOCRACY  5<D9 

period  from  1700  to  1760,  which  has  been  estimated  to  have  been 
almost  one  hundred  per  cent  every  twenty  years. 

Industrial  prosperity  has  been  a  great  stimulus  to  invention. 
Whereas  approximately  one  million  patents  have  been  issued  by  the 
national  government  since  1789,  more  than  one-third  New 
of  these  were  issued  after  the  year  1900.  For  the  seven  inventions, 
years  after  1907,  35,000  patents  have  been  issued  annually.  The  use 
of  X  rays,  automobiles,  and  submarine  boats  was  common  by  the 
beginning  of  the  twentieth  century.  The  heavier  than  air  aeroplane, 
which  thus  far  has  been  of  more  service  in  war  than  in  peace,  was 
perfected  by  the  Wright  brothers  of  Dayton,  Ohio,  in  1903.  Wireless 
telegraphy,  which  now  encircles  the  earth,  enabling  men  to  com 
municate  with  each  other  over  great  distances,  and  endowing 
ships  with  the  means  of  exchanging  messages  with  one  another  and 
with  the  land,  was  invented  by  the  Italian  scientist,  Marconi,  in  1901. 
An  ocean  cable  was  completed  across  the  Pacific  to  the  Philippines  in 
1903,  while  the  human  voice  is  now  heard  over  the  telephone  from 
New  York  to  San  Francisco. 

In  the  field  of  education  the  nation's  expanse  has  been  commen 
surate  with  its  growth  in  other  lines.     Colleges  both  for  men  and  for 
women  have  been  endowed  with  sums  which  a  half  century    Education 
ago  would  have  been  considered  fabulous.     Universities    and 
have    been    enabled    to    encourage    research,    the    state 
universities  of  the  West  have  made  themselves  great  forces  in  the  educa 
tional  world,  agricultural  schools  and  other  institutions  for  technical 
training  have  multiplied,  and  in  the  elementary  schools  vocational  in 
struction  has  received  emphasis.     Literature  can  boast  of  such  names 
as  William  Dean  Howells,  Bret   Harte,  Henry  James,  and   Francis 
Marion  Crawford  among  writers   of  fiction;    Sidney  Lanier,  Eugene 
Field,   James   Whitcomb   Riley,   and   Walt  Whitman   among  poets; 
Samuel  L.  Clemens  (Mark  Twain)  the  humorist,  and  Henry  Adams, 
James  Ford  Rhodes,  Edward  Channing,  John  Fiske,  and  John  Bach 
McMaster,  historians. 

From  1860  to  1913  the  total  imports  of  the  United  States  had  in 
creased  from  $350,000,000  to  $1,800,000,000,  the  total  exports  from 
$315,000,000,  to  $2,425,000,000,  an  increase  in  imports  and    Foreign 
exports  of  over  five  hundred  per  cent.     By  far  the  most    tr&de- 
valuable  single  article  sold  abroad  is  cotton,  exports  of  which  in  1913 
were  worth  $550,000,000.     One- third  only  of  the  cotton  crop  is  con 
sumed  at  home.     The  increase  in  the  value  of  the  exports  of  manu 
factured  goods  ready  for  consumption,  which  was  almost  two  thousand 
per  cent  from  1860  to  1913,  is  a  testimony  to  the  nation's  progress  in 


510  A  WORLD  POWER 

manufacturing.  In  1860  manufactured  goods  ready  for  consumption 
made  up  one-ninth  of  the  total  exports  of  the  country,  in  1915  one- third. 
The  United  States  has  not  only  surpassed  its  own  past  record^  but 
has  outstripped  all  the  other  nations  of  the  earth  in  material  progress, 
The  United  and  is  now  recognized  as  the  world's  wealthiest  nation. 
States^  the  Her  accumulated  wealth  of  over  $150,000,000,000  in 
wealthiest  1 9 14  was  more  than  double  that  of  France  and  nearly 
nation.  double  that  of  Great  Britain  or  Germany.  A  distin 

guished  British  authority  wrote  in  the  Statist  of  London,  comment 
ing  on  the  rapid  economic  progress  throughout  the  world  in  the 
nineteenth  century:  "But  if  the  economic  welfare  of  the  oldest  coun 
tries  has  improved  in  this  remarkable  manner,  the  progress  of  the 
new  countries  is  still  more  noteworthy.  For  the  most  part,  the  per 
sons  who  migrated  to  them  were  inconceivably  poor  and  destitute,  and 
these  have  attained  incomes  and  wealth  much  greater  on  the  average 
than  persons  w"ho  elected  to  remain  in  the  older  countries.  During 
the  last  one  hundred  years  the  wealth  of  the  United  States  has  in 
creased  from  about  $1,750,000,000  to  something  like  $150,000,000,000, 
or  nearly  8,500  per  cent,  and  the  income  has  risen  from  less  than 
$500,000,000  to  about  $35,000,000,000  a  year  (6,900  per  cent),  while 
population  has  grown  from  8,000,000  to  98,000,000,  an  expansion  of 
1,125  Per  cent-  The  progress  of  the  other  young  countries  has  been 
small  in  comparison  with  the  growth  of  wealth  in  the  United  States. 
.  .  .  No  group  of  countries  has  derived  greater  advantage  from  the 
credit  system  than  the  various  agricultural  states  of  the  new  world, 
which  have  obtained  vast  supplies  of  capital  from  Europe.  It  is 
evident  that  the  young  countries  would  have  developed  very  slowly 
if  they  had  been  unable  to  borrow  the  capital  needed  by  immigrants  to 
place  them  on  the  land  and  in  the  mines,  and  thus  to  gain  access 
to  the  inexhaustible  supplies  of  natural  wealth  which  these  countries 
contain.  The  amount  of  capital  obtained  by  the  United  States  from 
abroad  is  calculated  to  reach  $6,000,000,000."  Foreign  capital,  there 
fore,  as  well  as  wonderful  natural  resources  and  immigration,  may  be 
reckoned  among  the  leading  factors  in  the  progress  of  the  United  States. 

CONCENTRATION  OF  WEALTH,  AND  TRUST  REGULATION  BY  THE 
FEDERAL  GOVERNMENT 

Capital  took  advantage  of  the  prosperity  after  1900  to  perfect  its 
organization  into  larger  and  larger  units.  The  growth  of  corporations, 
first  noticeable  in  the  time  of  the  Civil  War,  reached  its  height  dur 
ing  Roosevelt's  presidency.  In  1899  there  were  approximately  sixty 
corporations  having  a  capital  of  from  $1,000,000  to  $5,000,000  each, 


PROGRESSIVE  DEMOCRACY  5" 

but  in  the  two  years,  1899-1901,  under  the  leadership  of  J.  Pier- 

pont  Morgan,  John   D.   Rockefeller,   E.   H.   Harriman,  Thegrowth 

and  other  "  captains  of  industry,"  almost  two  hundred  Of  corporate 


giant  trusts  were  formed,  the  combined  capital  of  which 
reached  $4,000,000,000.  In  1901  a  single  corporation,  the 
United  States  Steel  Corporation,  was  formed  which  at  the  present  time 
has  a  capital  of  approximately  $1,400,000,000.  By  January  i,  1908, 
the  total  capitalization  of  all  corporations  was  $31,000,000,000,  which 
represented  an  advance  of  fifty  per  cent  in  four  years.  The  Amal 
gamated  Copper  Company,  the  General  Electric  Company,  the  Inter 
national  Harvester  Company,  the  American  Telegraph  and  Telephone 
Company,  and  a  score  or  more  of  railroads  each  possess  a  capital 
of  over  $100,000,000,  and  many  other  companies  are  capitalized  at 
$50,000,000  or  over. 

The  railroads  furnish  a  striking  instance  of  the  centralizing  tenden 
cies  in  the  industrial  world.  At  the  opening  of  the  twentieth  century 
there  were  the  Vanderbilt  system  of  20,000  miles  of  road  Railroad  cen- 
from  New  York  to  Wyoming,  covering  the  region  of  the  tralization. 
Great  Lakes  and  the  upper  Mississippi  Valley,  the  Pennsylvania  system 
from  Philadelphia  to  Chicago  controlling  14,000  miles,  the  Morgan 
system  from  New  York  to  New  Orleans  with  12,000  miles,  the  Morgan- 
Hill  system  of  20,000  miles  from  Chicago  and  St.  Louis  to  the  Pacific, 
the  Harriman  system  of  19,000  miles  from  Chicago  to  the  Gulf  and 
San  Francisco,  the  Gould  system  of  14,000  miles  from  the  Middle  West 
to  the  Gulf,  and  minor  combinations  as  well,  till  almost  every  small 
railroad  was  engulfed  in  some  large  system. 

An  authority  on  the  subject  of  the  trusts  wrote  in  1904:  "They  are 
all  allied  and  intertwined  by  their  various  mutual  interests.  For  in 
stance,  the  railroad  interests  are  on  the  one  hand  allied  The  trust 
with  the  Vanderbilts  and  on  the  other  with  the  Rocke-  situation- 
fellers.  The  Vanderbilts  are  closely  allied  with  the  Morgan  group,  and 
both  the  Pennsylvania  and  the  Vanderbilt  interests  have  recently 
become  the  dominating  factors  in  the  Reading  system,  a  former  Mor 
gan  road  and  the  most  important  part  of  the  anthracite  coal  combine, 
which  has  always  been  dominated  by  the  Morgan  people.  Viewed  as  a 
whole,  we  find  the  dominating  influences  in  the  trusts  to  be  made  up  of 
an  intricate  network  of  large  and  small  capitalists,  many  allied  to  one 
another  by  ties  of  more  or  less  importance,  but  all  being  appendages  to 
or  parts  of  the  greater  groups  which  are  themselves  dependent  on  and 
allied  with  the  two  mammoth,  or  Rockefeller  and  Morgan,  groups. 
These  two  mammoth  groups  jointly  constitute  the  heart  of  the 
business  and  commercial  life  of  the  nation," 


512  A  WORLD  POWER 

The  Pujo  report,  submitted  to  the  House  of  Representatives  in  1913, 
declared  that  the  firm  members  and  directors  of  five  banking  houses  in 
The  Pujo  New  York  City  held  118  directorships  in  34  banks  and 
report.  trust  companies  having  total  resources  of  $2,679,000,000 

and  total  deposits  of  $1,983,000,000.  Counting  the  banks,  trust 
companies,  insurance  companies,  transportation  systems,  manufactur-. 
ing  and  trading  concerns,  and  the  public  service  corporations,  with 
which  they  were  connected,  the  money  trust,  as  this  handful  of  men 
came  to  be  called,  held  341  directorships  in  112  corporations  having 
aggregate  resources  or  capitalization  of  $22,245,000,000. 

A  great  achievement  of  the  Roosevelt  administration  was  to  bring 
to  a  head  the  popular  unrest  in  national  affairs,  and  to  institute  reform, 
Trust  regu-  through  the  executive  and  legislative  branches  of  the 
lation  under  government,  of  many  of  the  abuses  complained  of  by  the 
people,  chief  among  which  was  the  oppression  of  combined 
capital.  President  Roosevelt's  crusade  against  the  trusts  was  based  on 
the  obvious  fact  that,  under  the  new  industrial  regime  as  then  de 
veloped,  the  advantage  was  on  one  side,  with  more  benefits  falling  to 
the  owners  of  the  giant  corporations  than  to  the  army  of  laborers. 
Greater  power  of  supervision  over  business  enterprises  and  their  actions 
was  assumed  by  the  government.  The  Meat  Inspection  Act  provided 
that  no  meat  should  be  sent  out  from  meat  packing  houses  into 
other  states  or  to  foreign  countries  without  federal  inspection.  The 
Pure  Food  Law  closed  interstate  and  foreign  commerce  to  adulterated 
or  misbranded  foods  and  drugs,  and  forbade  their  manufacture  in  the 
District  of  Columbia  and  the  territories.  The  Hepburn  Rate  Law 
was  passed  in  1906,  giving  the  Interstate  Commerce  Commission 
greater  power  in  the  regulation  of  railroad  rates  and  authority  to. 
dictate  how  the  roads  should  keep  their  books. 

In  his  public  utterances  President  Roosevelt  drew  a  distinction 
between  the  good  and  the  bad  trusts;  he  placed  among  the  latter  those 

that  reaped  huge  benefits  "in  restraint  of  trade  or  corn- 
Enforcement  ,1  ,  ,,         j    .       ,T       r 

of  the  Sher-  merce  among  the  several  states  and  in  the  former  cate- 
man  Ajati-  gOry  those  that  did  not  attempt  complete  monopolies  and 
unreasonable  increase  of  prices  "in  restraint  of  trade." 
Against  the  bad  trusts  he  instituted  over  forty  suits  at  law  under  the 
Sherman  Anti-Trust  Act,  which  till  then  had  gone  practically  unen- 
forced.  One  of  these  suits,  directed  against  the  merger  or  union  of  the 
Northern  Pacific  Railroad  and  the  Great  Northern  Railroad  on  the 
ground  that  such  a  merger  was  "in  restraint  of  trade  among  the  several 
states,"  resulted  in  the  dissolution  of  the  combination,  and  exercised 
much  influence  in  preventing  other  such  unions.  In  another  suit. 


PROGRESSIVE  DEMOCRACY 


513 


directed  against  the  Standard  Oil  Company,  for  its  alleged  unfair  cus 
tom  of  demanding  from  the  railroads,  as  a  condition  of  its  continued 
patronage,  rebates  or  the  return  in  part  of  the  freight  charges  pre 
viously  paid  to  the  railroad  company  for  services  rendered,  a  fine  of 
$29,000,000  was  imposed  on  the  company  for  its  "  restraint  of  trade." 
The  decision  was  later  reversed  by  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United 
States,  and  the  fine  was  never  paid. 


A  MODERN  MEAT-PACKING  PLANT 
The  Chicago  Plant  of  Armour  and  Company;   the  largest  in  the  world. 

In  1910  Congress  passed  the  Mann-Elkins  Act,  which  brought  inter 
state  telephone,  telegraph,  and  cable  companies  under  the  jurisdiction 
of  the  Interstate  Commerce  Commission.     Perhaps  the    Trust  regu- 
most  far-reaching  part  of  the  act  was  that  which  con-    lation  under 
ferred  on  the  Commission  the  authority  to  suspend  pro 
posed  advances  in  railroad  rates,  pending  an  investigation  of  their 
propriety,  thus  placing  an  effective  check  on  the  great  railroad  com 
panies.     As  an  immediate  application  of  this  new  power,  the  Com 
mission,  after  an  investigation  of  the  expenses  of  railroad  management, 
forbade  the  railroads  to  advance  their  rates;  but  in  1914,  after  another 
investigation,  it  allowed  an  advance.     In  1915  it  ordered  reductions 
in  the  fates  of  the  coal-bearing  roads  of  Pennsylvania.     Interstate 


5H  A  WORLD  POWER 

express  companies,  electric  railways,  sleeping  car  companies,  and  pipe 
line  and  water  line  carriers  have  also  been  placed  under  the  super 
vision  of  the  Commission. 

President  Taft,  like  his  predecessor,  waged  unremitting  warfare  on 
the  trusts,  so  far  as  was  within  the  power  of  his  executive  office.  No 

other  administration  had  brought  so  many  suits  against 

"biS  business"  as  were  instituted  from  1909  to  1913. 
man  Anti-  An  important  case  against  the  tobacco  trust  and  another 
under  Taft.  against  the  Standard  Oil  Company  were  won  by  the 

government,  and  an  order  was  secured  from  the  court  in 
each  case  breaking  up  the  corporations  in  question,  though  the  dis 
solution  accomplished  little.  The  Supreme  Court  in  Taft's  time  also 
handed  down  a  decision  dissolving  the  union  of  the  Union  Pacific 
Railroad  with  the  Southern  Pacific,  and  another  holding  that  the 
Sherman  Anti-Trust  Law  forbade  "corners"  in  the  market. 

The  Sherman  Anti-Trust  Law  was  first  interpreted  as  prohibiting 
all  interstate  combinations  in  restraint  of  trade,  whether  these  were 
Trust  re  u-  reasonable  or  unreasonable;  but  in  the  oil  and  tobacco 
lation  under  cases  the  court  established  the  ruling  that  only  those 
i^The  corporations  violated  the  law  which  "unduly"  restrained 

Watch  trade.     Again,  in  1915,  in  the  Watch  Trust  case,  the  court 

further  applied  the  rule  of  reason  by  asserting  that  a 
corporation  that  controlled  even  as  high  as  eighty  per  cent  of  the  trade 
in  a  particular  commodity  was  not  necessarily  breaking  the  law.  Said 
the  court,  "It  is  reasonable  to  say  that  when  a  large  business  has  proved 
itself  to  be  beneficial  and  not  harmful  to  the  community,  it  should  not 
be  condemned  because  it  is  large." 

Later,  in  the  year  1915,  the  national  tribunal  refused  the  petition 
of  the  United  States  government  for  the  dissolution  of  the  United 

States  Steel  Corporation,  although  this  trust  was  capi- 
u'nited  talized  at  $1,402,846,000  and  controlled  over  one  hundred 

anc^  e^nty  companies.     Said  the  court,  "The  real  test 

of  monopoly  is  not  the  size  of  that  which  is  acquired  but 
the  trade  power  of  that  which  is  not  acquired.  ...  If  mere  size 
were  the  test  of  monopoly  and  trade  restraint,  we  have  not  one  but  a 
half  dozen  unlawful  monopolies  in  the  large  department  stores  of 
a  single  city."  Plainly  the  court  is  now  more  conservative  than  for 
merly  in  its  attitude  toward  the  trusts,  and  is  not  inexorably  set 
against  big  business  as  such. 

In  1902  the  labor  unions  found  themselves  confronted  by  the 
Sherman  Anti-Trust  Law,  when  they  attempted  to  compel  a  firm  of 
hat  manufacturers  in  Danbury,  Connecticut,  to  recognize  the  power 


PROGRESSIVE  DEMOCRACY  515 

of  the  union.     The  firm  were  running  their  factory  on  a  non-union 
basis,  employing  whomsoever  they  chose.     A  boycott  de-    3.  T^ 
clared  against  the  firm  and  their  goods  by  the  United  Hat-    labor  unions 
ters  of  North  America  seriously  affected  the  firm's  business    Sherman 
in  other  states  as  well  as  in  Connecticut.     Thereupon  the    Act> 
factory  brought  suit  against  the  two  hundred  and  forty  members  of 
the  local  hatters'  union  on  the  ground  that  the  boycott,  in  restraining 
interstate  trade,  was  in  violation  of  the  anti-trust  law.     The  case 
was  in  the  courts  for  twelve  years.     In  1913  the  United  States  Circuit 
Court  of  Appeals  ruled  against  the  hatters  and  awarded  the  injured 
factory  $252,000,  and  in  1915  the  Supreme  Court  upheld  the  decision. 
The  position  of  the  court  was  that  the  Sherman  Anti-Trust  Law  ap 
plied  to  combinations  of  laborers  in  restraint  of  interstate  trade,  as 
well  as  to  combinations  of  capitalists. 

The  vagueness  of  the  Sherman  Anti-Trust  Law,  which  did  not 
specifically  designate  any  particular  acts  as  constituting  restraint  of 
trade,  threw  upon  the  courts  the  task  of  interpreting  and 
applying  the  law  in  concrete  cases.  As  soon  as  the  courts  ton  Anti-  *J~ 
began  to  exercise  their  immense  power  under  the  law 
they  achieved  a  reputation  for  arbitrariness  and  drew  upon 
themselves  bitter  criticism.  In  an  effort  to  meet  this  situation  the 
Clayton  Anti-Trust  Law  was  passed  in  1914  to  supplement  the 
Sherman  Act  by  specifying  particular  acts  as  constituting  restraint  of 
trade.  In  the  first  place,  though  the  phraseology  of  the  new  law  is 
itself  vague  on  the  point,  labor  unions  are  declared  not  to  be  "  illegal 
combinations  or  conspiracies  in  restraint  of  trade  under  the  anti 
trust  laws,"  so  that,  if  the  law  could  have  been  retroactive,  the 
Danbury  hatters  would  probably  not  have  lost  their  case.  Price 
discriminations  are  forbidden,  as  also  are  "tying  contracts,"  by 
which  the  manufacturer  sells  an  article  with  the  restriction  that 
the  purchaser  shall  not  use  articles  made  by  a  competitor.  The  ban 
is  likewise  placed  on  holding  companies,  on  interlocking  direc 
torates  under  certain  conditions,  and  on  injunctions  by  the  courts 
restraining  people  from  quitting  work. 

The    first    regular   session    of    Congress   under    President  Wilson 
abolished  the  Bureau  of  Corporations  set  up  under  President  Roosevelt 
in  1903  and  gave  over  its  functions  and  some  new  duties    5   The  Trade 
to  a  new  Trade  Commission.     This  commission  is  directed    Commission 
to  prevent   persons,  partnerships,  and  corporations,   ex-      ct  of  1914' 
cept  banks  and  common  carriers,  from  using  unfair  methods  of  compe 
tition  in  commerce.    It  will  receive  reports  from  all  corporations  with 
a  capitalization  of  $5,000,000  or  more  not  under  the  Interstate  Com- 


A  WORLD  POWER 


merce  Commission.  It  will  investigate  corporate  activities,  mate  pub 
lic  reports,  hold  hearings  if  there  is  reason  to  believe  that  unfair 
methods  are  being  used,  and  issue  orders  if  the  parties  aie  found 
guilty.  The  Commission  may  also  assist  the  courts  in  dissolving 
illegal  combinations  under  the  Sherman  law. 

THE  PROGRESS  OF  LABOR 

The  menacing  growth  of  the  trusts  has  not  bred  as  great  violence 
among  the  laboring  classes  as  might  be  expected.  The  great  pros- 
The  laboring  perity,  which  has  been  the  lot  of  the  country  as  a  whole, 
classes.  js  a  partial  explanation  of  the  phenomenon.  Agricul 

tural  and  industrial  unrest  after 
1900  has  not  permeated  national 
politics  as  in  the  last  decade  of 
the  nineteenth  century.  Not  that 
labor  has  meekly  yielded;  it  has 
waged  many  a  bitter  strike,  but 
with  increasingly  favorable  re 
sults.  Organization  of  the  forces 
of  labor  has  confronted  the  organi 
zation  of  capital  and  has  fre 
quently  won  the  day. 

In  1902  occurred  one  of  these 
mighty  combats  between  capital 
and  labor  that  af 
fected  all  sections 
and  classes  of  the 
country.  Nearly  one 
hundred  and  fifty  thousand  hard 
coal  miners  of  Pennsylvania  left 
their  work  and  wages  under  the 
leadership  of  John  Mitchell,  Presi 
dent  of  the  United  Mine  Workers 
of  America,  to  battle  against  their  JOHN  MITCHELL 

numerous  grievances,  chief  among 

which  were  low  wages  and  long  hours.  Their  proposal  of  arbitration 
was  spurned  by  the  mine  owners,  and  for  six  months  the  whole  coun 
try  suffered  from  a  shortage  of  coal.  President  Roosevelt  felt  con 
strained  for  the  sake  of  the  public  to  offer  his  services  to  bring  about 
a  settlement  of  the  difficulty,  and  he  succeeded  in  inducing  represen 
tatives  of  both  sides  to  come  together  in  his  presence  in  the  White 
House  and  pledge  themselves  to  accept  the  findings  of  a  board  of  ar- 


The  Penn 
sylvania  coal 
miners' 
strike. 


PROGRESSIVE  DEMOCRACY  517 

bitration  which  he  himself  was  to  appoint.  The  findings  of  the  board, 
generally  in  favor  of  the  strikers,  finally  brought  the  strike  to  an  end. 
The  cost  of  the  strike  to  all  parties  directly  concerned  was  estimated 
at  $100,000,000,  while  the  indirect  results  to  the  country  at  large,  as 
measured  in  the  high  price  of  coal  and  the  losses  occasioned  by  the 
inability  of  many  individuals  and  manufacturing  concerns  to  secure 
any  coal  at  all,  cannot  be  estimated. 

A  bitter  strike  the  next  year  in  the  Cripple  Creek  coal  mines  of 
Colorado  attracted  wide  attention  both  on  account  of  the  many  acts  of 
Violence  on  the  part  of  the  strikers  and  the  stern  methods    Later 
used    by   the    militia   to   restore   order.      Strikes   of    the    stnkes- 
Lawrence,  Massachusetts,  textile  workers  in  1912,  and  of  the  Pater- 
son,  New  Jersey,  silk  operatives  in  1913  disturbed  the  nation.     The 
Colorado  coal  strike  in  1914-1915,  characterized  by  particularly  violent 
action  on  the  part  of  both  strikers  and  state  authorities,  demonstrated 
that  both  capital  and  labor  still  had  serious  difficulties  to  adjust. 

An  important  step  toward  the  prevention  and  settlement  of  strikes 
was  taken  in  1913,  when  Congress  by  a  unanimous  vote  passed  an 
arbitration  act  for  railroads  and  their  employees.  This  ap- 


plies  to  strikes  of  men  actually  employed  in  moving  trains    Employees 

TT    j        •*.    IT-  •    <.   j     Arbitration 

in  interstate  commerce.     Under  it  there  was  appointed    Act  under 

by  the  President  a  Board  of  Mediation  and  Conciliation,  Wilson- 
which  has  succeeded  in  settling  some  strikes  by  its  own  mediation, 
while  in  others,  under  its  supervision,  a  board  of  arbitrators  has  been 
appointed  and  required  to  make  its  report  in  ninety  days.  The  first 
case  handled  by  the  board  prevented  a  strike  in  1913  by  the  92,000 
conductors  and  trainmen  of  the  forty-  two  eastern  railroads;  a  year  later 
the  board  brought  together  ninety-eight  trans-Mississippi  railroads 
and  their  60,000  dissatisfied  engineers  and  firemen.  In  this  latter  case 
a  strike  was  prevented,  which  in  the  crisis  of  the  opening  months  of 
,the  European  war  would  have  been  a  calamity  of  incalculable  mag 
nitude.  Over  twenty-six  railroad  controversies  have  been  settled  by 
the  board.  A  division  of  conciliation  in  the  Department  of  Labor  at 
Washington  has  prevented  a  number  of  strikes  in  various  lines  of 

industry. 

THE  TARIFF 

In  the  Roosevelt  administration,  after  the  panic  of  1907,  in  addition 
to  the  distress  caused  by  the  panic,  there  was  keen  discomfort  occa 
sioned  by  the  continued  rapid  rise  in  prices.  While  wages  or  salaries 
remained  the  same  or  advanced  but  slightly,  prices  for  the  necessi 
ties  of  life  and  especially  for  manufactured  products  were  mounting 
higher  -and  higher*  It  was  becoming  increasingly  difficult  for  the 


5iS  A  WORLD  POWER 

people  to  make  both  ends  meet.  While  the  increase  in  the  supply  o.( 
The  demand  &°^  was  doubtless  the  leading  cause  of  this  phenomenon, 
for  a  revi-  the  favors  bestowed  by  the  tariff  on  the  great  trusts  seemed 
tariff *after  to  tne  popular  mind  a  grievous  cause.  These  could  be 
the  panic  of  reached  through  politics,  and  accordingly  a  demand  arose 
for  the  revision  and  reduction  of  the  tariff.  This  demand 
was  incorporated  in  the  platform  of  the  Republican  party  in  1908,  and 
the  people  looked  to  the  newly  elected  administration  for  relief. 

Congress  met  at  the  special  call  of  President  Taft  in  the  spring  of 
1909,  struggled  for  five  months  over  the  problem,  and  finally  passed 
The  tariff  the  Payne- Aldrich  Law.  A  feature  of  the  law  which 
under  Taft.  appealed  to  the  people  was  the  corporation  tax,  which  was 
a  tax  of  one  per  cent  on  the  income  of  all  corporations  the  yearly  net 
earnings  of  which  were  above  $5000.  As  a  tariff  measure  the  new 
law  failed  to  satisfy  the  demands  for  downward  revision,  since  many 
of  the  new  rates  were  higher  than  the  old  ones.  In  the  Republi 
can  party  itself  a  constantly  growing  element,  known  as  the  Insurgent 
Republicans,  were  extremely  dissatisfied  with  the  new  law  and  with 
the  alleged  conservative  tendencies  of  the  administration.  The  fol 
lowing  campaign  of  1910  for  the  election  of  members  to  the  House  of 
Representatives  was  fought  out  on  the  vexed  question,  and  so  great 
was  the  dissatisfaction  over  the  Payne- Aldrich  Law  that  the  Demo 
crats,  who  stood  for  a  lowering  of  the  tariff  rates,  received  a  heavy 
majority  in  the  new  House  over  the  Regular  Republicans,  who  defended 
the  Payne- Aldrich  rates.  In  the  next  two  years  the  Democrats  used 
their  power  in  Congress  to  pass  several  special  tariff  bills  lowering  the 
rates  on  single  articles,  such  as  woolen  goods,  cotton  goods,  steel,  and 
iron,  each  of  which  measures  encountered  the  veto  of  the  President,  who 
championed  the  rates  of  1909.  In  framing  these  laws  Congress  had 
the  benefit  of  the  report  of  the  Tariff  Commission,  which  had  been 
appointed  by  the  President,  with  the  sanction  of  Congress,  to  ascertain, 
if  possible,  by  an  investigation  of  the  cost  of  manufacture  at  home  and 
abroad,  what  would  be  just  rates  of  tariff  on  imported  articles. 

To  conciliate  the  friends  of  a  low  tariff,  President  Taft  sought  to 

put  into  operation  a  treaty  of  reciprocity  with  Canada.     This  was 

not  a  new  idea.     There  had  been  reciprocity,  or  mutual 

free  trade,  with  Canada,  in  certain  articles  in  the  late 

fifties  and  early  sixties  of  the  nineteenth  century;  at  the  suggestion  of 

Secretary  Elaine  there  was  reciprocity  with  certain  southern  countries 

in  the  McKinley  Tariff  Act,  and  the  same  plan  was  embodied  in  the 

Dingley  Act.     The  approval  of  Canadian  reciprocity  by  Congress  in 

1912  was  considered  a  triumph  for  the  administration,  but  the  desired 


PROGRESSIVE  DEMOCRACY  519 

arrangement  never  went  into  effect  because  the  Dominion  of  Canada, 
through  fear  that  reciprocity  would  mean  the  economic  dependence  of 
Canada  upon  the  United  States,  refused  its  assent. 

Like  President  Taft,  President  Wilson  called  Congress  together  in 
special  session  soon  after  his  inauguration  to  consider  the  tariff,  and 
after  another  long  struggle  a  downward  revision  was  The  tariff 
accomplished  by  the  Underwood  Tariff  Act.  The  free  under  wason 
list  was  greatly  extended.  An  important  change  wrought  by  the 
law  was  the  levying  of  a  progressive  tax  on  incomes.  In  an  important 
case  concerning  the  income  tax  levied  by  Congress  during  the  Civil 
War,  it  had  been  argued  that  this  tax  was  a"  direct  tax  and  as  such  was 
unconstitutional  because  not  apportioned  among  the  states  according 
to  population,  but  the  Supreme  Court  decided  that  the  tax  was  not  a 
direct  tax  and  therefore  did  not  need  to  be  apportioned.  Later  the  same 
tribunal  changed  its  mind  as  it  has  the  right  to  do,  and  in  1895  decided 
that  the  tax  of  1894  on  the  income  from  land  was  direct,  like  a  tax  on 
land  itself,  and  therefore  unconstitutional  because  not  apportioned. 
Since  it  would  be  difficult  and  unpopular  to  apportion  an  income  tax, 
President  Taft  paved  the  way  for  the  passage  of  a  national  income  tax 
without  apportionment,  by  forcing  through  Congress  and  submitting  to 
the  people  a  constitutional  amendment  allowing  such  taxation,  and  this 
amendment,  the  sixteenth,  was  embodied  in  the  Constitution  in  1913. 
Following  this,  the  income  tax  law  of  1913,  unapportioned,  was  soon  on 
the  statute  books.  The  new  tax,  along  with  the  corporation  tax,  which 
was  carried  over  from  the  Payne-Aldrich  law  into  the  new  act,  constituted 
an  important  attack  on  the  high  tariff  wall,  for  it  revealed  a  new  source 
of  national  revenue,  to  be  borne  by  those  who  were  best  able  to  con 
tribute  to  the  support  of  the  government,  and  it  made  the  demand  for 
revenue  from  the  tariff  less  urgent.  Moreover,  since  the  income  tax 
was  a  direct  tax,  which  the  people  paid  directly  into  the  treasury  of  the 
government,  it  was  to  be  expected  that  Congress  would  be  held  to  stricter 
accountability  and  to  a  wiser  and  more  economical  use  of  public  money. 

NATIONAL  BANKING  LAWS 

The  National  Banking  Act  of  1863  never  fully  satisfied  the  financial 
needs  of  the  country.     In  a  time  of  financial  stringency,  when  men 
hoard  their  money  and  bankers  and  individuals  are  slow    rfhe  National 
to  make  loans,  it  is  desirable  that  the  national  banks  have    Banking  Act 
the  power  of   issuing   new  paper   money  quickly.    This    °  1914' 
they  could  not  do  under  the  old  law,  by  the  provisions  of  which  notes 
could   be   issued   only   on   the   basis   of   a   deposit   of   United  States 


520  A  WORLD  POWER 

bonds  in  the  treasury  of  the  United  States;  it  was  difficult  and  some 
times  impossible  to  obtain  these  bonds  in  an  emergency.  The  Aldrich- 
Vreeland  Act  of  1908  aimed  to  remedy  this  defect  by  allowing  the 
national  banks  to  issue  notes  upon  a  deposit  of  state,  county,  or 
municipal  bonds,  and  under  certain  circumstances  upon  security  of  the 
notes  of  sound  private  parties.  The  plan  did  not  work  out  in  practice, 
and  the  special  session  of  Congress  called  by  President  Wilson  in  1913 
considered  the  question  again,  while  it  was  at  the  same  time  putting 
the  Underwood  Tariff  Law  on  the  statute  books.  In  December,  1913, 
the  Federal  Reserve  Act  was  passed.  Under  this  law  the  United 
States  is  divided  into  twelve  districts,  in  each  of  which  is  located  a 
Federal  reserve  bank,  which  is  not  a  bank  for  ordinary  depositors  but 
rather  a  bank  for  banks.  In  this  reserve  bank  the  individual  bank 
must  make  a  deposit  of  a  certain  proportion  of  its  reserve,  if  it  would 
be  a  member  of  the  system  and  share  in  its  benefits.  If  the  member 
bank  desires  to  increase  the  amount  of  its  circulating  notes,  it  can  do  so 
immediately  by  selling  to  its  reserve  bank  "commercial  paper,"  that 
is,  the  notes  of  individuals  it  may  be  holding,  and  receiving  in  return 
from  the  reserve  bank  " reserve  notes"  to  circulate  as  money.  Such 
an  emergency  currency  is  elastic  and  quickly  issued.  A  private  in 
dividual  can  neither  borrow  from  a  reserve  bank  nor  make  deposits 
in  it,  but  the  United  States  may  deposit  its  revenue,  if  it  wishes,  in  the 
reserve  banks  and  draw  checks  upon  them. 

THE  POST  OFFICE 

Down  to  1900  three  important  changes  had  been  made  in  the  post 
office  since  the  Civil  War:  the  penny  postal  card  was  introduced  in  1873, 
Post  Office  the  rate  of  letter  postage  was  reduced  in  1883  from  three 
reforms.  ±o  ^wo  cents  for  half  an  ounce,  and  in  1885  for  an  ounce, 

and  rural  free  delivery  was  inaugurated  in  1897.  In  the  four 
years  of  President  Taft's  administration  two  more  innovations  were 
inaugurated.  First,  postal  savings  banks  were  opened  in  the  post 
offices  of  the  cities  and  the  larger  towns  for  the  accommodation  of 
those  who  wished  a  place  of  deposit  for  their  money,  in  which  they 
would  feel  more  confidence  than  in  the  ordinary  deposit  banks  and 
savings  banks,  though  the  rate  of  interest  paid  by  the  government  on 
deposits  was  low.  Second,  on  January  i,  1913,  the  post  office  began 
the  operation  of  a  parcel  post  or  express  business  for  the  transmission 
of  small  packages  at  rates  generally  far  below  those  charged  by  the 
express  companies.  The  government  fixes  the  charges  for  its  services 
by  the  zone  system,  in  accordance  with  which  the  amount  charged 
increases  as  the  distance  increases. 


PROGRESSIVE  DEMOCRACY  521 

CONSERVATION 

With  his  insight  into  the  history  and  conditions  of  the  West,  derived 
from  a  sojourn  of  several  years  in  that  section,  President  Roosevelt 
directed  public  attention  to  the  nation's  wasteful  use  of  its 
forest  and  mineral  lands.  Formerly,  under  the  generous  under 
policy  of  the  government,  these  had  either  been  given  to  j£eSfarests 
private  corporations  or  sold  at  very  low  rates.  Though 
under  such  a  system  the  country  was  rapidly  developed,  the  feeling 
slowly  arose  that  the  system,  advantageous  though  it  might  be  in  a 
frontier  country,  was  too  lavish  and  too  wasteful.  Presidents  before 
Roosevelt  had  had  the  power  and  had  exercised  it,  to  withdraw  the 
timber  lands  on  the  public  domain  from  sale,  in  order  to  preserve  them 
from  immediate  and  wasteful  consumption;  but  Roosevelt  took  advan 
tage  of  the  prerogative  to  a  greater  extent  than  had  any  of  his  predeces 
sors.  There  are  to-day  over  one  hundred  and  fifty  forests  in  the  United 
States  reserved  by  the  government,  with  an  area  exceeding  162,000,000 
acres;  of  this,  Roosevelt  is  responsible  for  the  reservation  of  150,000,- 
ooo  acres.  The  Appalachian  Forest  Reserve  Law  of  1911  provided 
funds  for  the  purchase  by  the  United  States  "of  land  for  national  forests 
on  the  watersheds  of  national  streams."  This  enabled  the  national 
government  to  acquire  forests  in  the  Eastern  States,  and  thus  to  inaugu 
rate  there  as  well  as  in  the  West,  a  system  of  national  forest  conserva 
tion.  Pennsylvania,  Wisconsin,  and  Washington  have  large  state 
forest  reserves.  For  preserving  the  soil  and  for  preventing  sudden 
floods,  as  well  as  for  perpetuating  the  rapidly  diminishing  lumber 
supply,  forest  conservation,  as  now  administered  by  the  forest  service 
of  the  Department  of  Agriculture,  is  of  immense  national  importance. 

By  an  act  of  1910  and  by  previous  acts  the  President  may  also  with 
draw  from  sale  the  mineral  lands  of  the  public  domain;  the  law  even 
separates  the  surface  of  coal  lands  fit  for  agriculture  from    Mineral 
the  mineral  beneath  the  surface,  and  allows  the  separate    lands- 
disposal  of  each.     Many  thousands  of  acres  of  mineral  lands  have  novtf 
been  withdrawn  from  sale  by  the  nation,  and  also  by  a  few  of  the  states. 
The  opponents  of  such  a  policy  claim   that  progress  is  blocked  by 
holding  the  public  lands  in  reserve,  and  that  these  lands  would  be  more 
rapidly  developed  in  the  hands  of  individuals. 

The  Reclamation  Act  of  1902,  known  also  as  the  Newlands  Act,  set 
aside  the  proceeds  of  the.  sale  of  the  public  lands  in  sixteen  western 
states  as  a  special  fund  with  which  to  irrigate  arid  lands 
in  these  states,  while  the  irrigated  lands  themselves  were 
to  be<sold  at  low  rates  and  the  proceeds  devoted  to  further  reclamation. 


522  A  WORLD  POWER 

Twenty-eight  irrigation  projects  were  completed  in  eight  years  at  a  cost 
of  $70,000,000,  and  nearly  two  million  acres  of  waste  lands  thereby 
brought  under  cultivation.  Some  of  the  western  states  have  gone 
into  the  same  work,  for  example,  Idaho,  which  has  constructed  one  of 
the  largest  irrigation  canals  in  the  world  and  reclaimed  over  300,000 
acres  of  waste  land.  Utah  also  is  engaged  in  extensive  undertakings 
along  the  same  lines. 

The  general  policy  of  conservation  of  natural  resources  embraces 
also  the  water  power  of  rivers  and  streams.  This  great  power  of 
Water  nature,  man's  servant  from  the  earliest  days,  was  found 

power.  ^0  be  especially  valuable  for  the  production  of  electricity, 

which  can  easily  be  transmitted  for  use  fifty  to  one  hundred  miles  away. 
Under  President  Roosevelt  Congress  abandoned  its  former  policy  of 
granting  perpetual  water  power  sites  recklessly,  and  now  such  sites 
are  carefully  granted  for  a  term  of  years  and  at  a  specified  rental. 

So  firmly  convinced  was  President  Roosevelt  of  the  wisdom  of 
united  action  in  conserving  national  resources  that  he  called  together 
The  at  the  White  House,  in  1908,  a  meeting  of  the  governors  of 

"House  of ?)  all  the  states  and  a  few  other  prominent  men,  whose 
)rs'  advice  would  be  valuable,  to  exchange  views  on  the 
subject  and  secure  the  cooperation  of  the  states  with  the  national 
government  in  the  work.  Since  that  time  the  governors  have  met 
in  regular  annual  session  to  discuss  matters  in  regard  to  which 
uniform  action  by  the  states  is  desirable.  The  "  House  of  Govern 
ors"  possesses  no  legislative  or  other  powers,  but  as  an  advisory 
body  it  has  a  wide  influence.  Among  the  subjects  discussed  in  these 
meetings,  in  addition  to  the  preservation  of  the  forests,  streams,  and 
mineral  lands,  are  such  matters  as  uniformity  in  marriage  and  divorce 
laws,  and  laws  on  bills  and  notes,  the  improvement  of  factory  condi 
tions,  and  the  prevention  of  child  labor. 

The  Taft  administration  incurred  disfavor  in  some  quarters  on 
account  of  its  attitude  toward  the  conservation  measures  adopted  in 
Conservation  the  previous  administration.  Led  by  Gifford  Pinchot,  at 
under  Taft.  that  tjme  hea(}  of  ^e  forestry  bureau,  a  loud  remonstrance 
arose  when  it  became  known  that  the  President  proposed  to  allow  the 
sale  to  private  individuals  of  certain  immensely  valuable  coal-bearing 
lands  in  Alaska,  which  would  result,  it  was  charged,  in  the  creation 
of  a  monopoly  in  the  mining  of  coal  in  the  territory.  Secretary  Bal- 
linger  of  the  Interior  Department,  who  had  the  matter  in  charge,  was 
accused  of  negligence.  After  a  long  and  sensational  congressional 
investigation  of  the  whole  matter  he  was  allowed  by  the  President 
to  resign. 


PROGRESSIVE  DEMOCRACY  523 

By  the  admission  of  New  Mexico  and  Arizona  into  the  Union  during 
Taft's   term   of  office,  the  last  portion   of  territory,  except  Alaska, 
within  the  continental  limits  of  the  United  States  entered    Forty-eight 
the  sisterhood  of  states.     A  federal  government,  which    states- 
in   one   hundred   and  twenty-five   years  has   added   thirty-five  new 
states  to  the  original  nucleus  of  thirteen,  and  at  the  same  time  has 
preserved    its    original    form    without    serious   change,    has   proved 
the  wisdom  of  its  founders.     Alaska,  too,  was  started  on  her  road  to 
statehood  by  her  organization  as  a  territory  in  1913. 

THE   CIVIL   SERVICE 

At  the  beginning  of  the  operation  of  the  Civil  Service  Reform  Act 
President  Arthur  applied  the  new  rules  to  15,000  positions;  President 
Cleveland  extended  them  to  55,000  more,  and  President    R6sum6  of 
Roosevelt   to   87,000   more.     Among   the   offices  placed    the  system 
under  the  rules  by  Roosevelt  were  many  of  those  con-    ^centom 
nected  with  the  government  service  in  the  Philippines, the    up  to  Presi- 
United  States  forestry  service,  rural  free  delivery,  work  of 
the  Panama  Canal,  together  with  15,000  fourth  class  postmasterships. 

President  Taft  showed  himself  a  firm  friend  of  the  merit  system  in 
the  public  service  by  maintaining  the  system  as  handed  down  to  him 
by  his  predecessors,  and  extending  it  to  assistant  post-    Extension  of 
masters,  post  office  inspectors,  and  30,000  more  fourth    the  system 
class  postmasters.     Friends  of  the  reform  seek  amendment 
of   the   law,   that   its   benefits   may   be    extended  to  all  the  higher 
offices   in  the  government,  which  are  not  strictly  political  in  their 
nature,  that  is,  to  such  positions  as  those  of  the  more  important  post 
masters,  the  United  States  district  attorneys,  and  the  United  States 
marshals.     The  demand  is  also  made  that  a  system  of  old  age  pensions 
be  adopted  for  those  who  devote  their  life  to  the  public  service,  that 
dabbling  in  politics  and  attempts  to  influence  legislation  by  office 
holders  be  strictly  forbidden,  and  that  the  frequent  exceptions  to  the 
rules,  made  by  order  of  the  President,  be  stopped. 

Under  President  Wilson  the  system  has  been  maintained,  though 
when  a  party  which  has  been  out  of  office  sixteen  years    The  civil 
comes   into   power,    the   pressure   is   tremendous   for   a    service  under 
division  of  spoils. 

THE  PENSION  SYSTEM 

In  Roosevelt's  administration  not  only  was  the  pension  service 
extended  by  executive  order  on  the  eve  of  the  presidential  campaign 
of  1904,  but  an  act  of  Congress  in  1907  awarded  a  pension  to  every 


524  A  WORLD  POWER 

Union  veteran  over  sixty-five  years  of  age.  This  was  what  is  called  a 
The  pension  service  pension,  and  was  paid  to  every  soldier  applying 
system  for  it,  even  though  he  stood  in  no  need  of  aid  and  had 

Roosevelt         received  no  wound  or  hurt  while  in  the  service.     The 

pension  bill  for  the  year  1909  reached  $165,000,000. 
In  1912  three-fourths  of  the  Northern  army  of  1861-1865  were  dead, 
yet  the  government  in  this  year  devoted  $180,000,000  to  the  care  of 
The  system  the  survivors,  or  $20,000,000  more  than  the  expense  of  the 
under  Taft.  British  navy  in  this  year  and  only  $20,000,000  less  than 
the  cost  of  the  German  army  in  the  same  year.  Another  act  of  Con 
gress  in  1912  raised  the  rates  once  more,  so  that  veterans  of  three 
years'  service  at  the  age  of  sixty- two  were  granted  $16  per  month, 
at  sixty-six  $19,  at  seventy  $25,  and  at  seventy-five  $30,  and  all 
wounded  or  disabled  in  the  service  $30  per  month.  Pensions  for 
veterans  of  the  Confederate  army  are  provided  by  many  of  the 
Southern  state  governments. 

CHANGES  IN  THE  NATIONAL  GOVERNMENT 

Two  of  the  old  Populist  demands  for  changes  in  the  form  of  the 
national  government  were  embodied  in  the  Constitution  as  the  six- 
Two  consti-  teenth  and  seventeenth  amendments  early  in  the  year  1913. 
tutional  By  the  one,  Congress  was  given  power  to  lay  and  collect 

taxes  on  incomes  from  whatever  source  derived,  without 
apportionment  among  the  several  states  according  to  population,  as  the 
Constitution  originally  prescribed  that  all  direct  taxes  should  be  ap 
portioned,  and,  as  we  have  seen,  Congress  availed  itself,  that  same  year, 
of  this  amendment  by  laying  an  income  tax.  The  other  provided  for 
popular  election  of  United  States  Senators,  instead  of  election  by  the 
state  legislatures  as  was  originally  provided  by  the  Constitution.  The 
acceptance  of  these  changes,  advocated  in  the  last  quarter  of  the  nine 
teenth  century  by  the  parties  representing  agrarian  and  industrial  un 
rest,  proved  that  although  a  distinct  national  party  had  been  abandoned 
by  these  classes,  their  strength  was  asserting  itself  in  the  existing  parties. 
During  the  Taft  administration  the  growing  forces  of  the  Insurgent 
Republicans  asserted  their  power  in  the  national  House  of  Representa 
tives,  in  alliance  with  the  Democrats,  by  forcing  two  im- 
thearuies  of  portant  changes  in  the  parliamentary  rules  of  that  body. 

the  House  Speaker  Cannon,  against  whom  the  revolt  was  chiefly  aimed, 
and  of  the  .  .  u  j  u 

Senate.  had  exercised,  to  be  sure,  only  the  same  powers  as  had  been 

in  the  hands  of  Speaker  Reed  in  the  previous  decade;  but 
whereas  the  latter  succeeded  in  holding  his  party  following  loyal  to  his 
leadership,  the  former  failed.  First,  the  Speaker  himself  was  removed 


PROGRESSIVE  DEMOCRACY  525 

from  the  Committee  on  Rules,  its  membership  was  increased  to  ten, 
and  the  House  was  directed  to  choose  the  committee.  This  committee 
has  the  power  to  report  to  the  House  any  rule  which,  when  adopted, 
controls  its  proceedings;  and  the  Speaker's  removal  from  the  committee, 
tended  to  transfer  control  in  legislation  to  the  House  itself.  Second,  the 
Speaker  was  deprived  of  his  power  to  appoint  the  regular  committees 
of  the  House,  and  the  House  itself  resumed  this  function.  In  the  Senate 
the  rule  was  adopted  that  the  traditional  freedom  of  debate  in  that  body 
might  be  cut  off  by  petition  of  members. 

CHANGES   IN  GOVERNMENTAL  PROCEDURE  IN  THE   STATES 

The  Populists,  after  their  decided  defeat  in  the  presidential  contest 
of  1896,  accepted  the  result  more  gracefully  than  is  usually  the  wont  of 
worsted  parties.  Seeing  the  futility  of  entering  national  Popuiistic 
politics,  they  entered  upon  a  successful  career  in  the  poli-  legislation 
tics  of  the  several  states.  The  initiative  and  the  referendum,  ' 
to  which  the  Populists  had  committed  themselves  in  the  nineties,  aim  to 
secure  a  larger  and  more  direct  participation  by  the  people  in  the  affairs 
of  government.  The  one  is  a  device  whereby  a  certain  percentage  of 
voters,  differing  in  different  states,  may  propose  a  law  and  with  or  with 
out  the  consent  of  the  state  legislature,  as  the  state  law  on  the  subject 
may  direct,  submit  the  same  to  the  voters  for  approval;  if  approved  by 
the  requisite  majority  the  measure  becomes  a  part  of  the  law  of  the  state. 
By  the  referendum,  a  certain  stipulated  percentage  of  voters  may  de 
mand  that  any  bill  passed  by  the  state  legislature  be  submitted  to  the 
voters  of  the  state,  and  accepted  or  rejected  as  the  popular  vote  may 
decide. 

In  1896  the  Democrats  and  Populists  in  control  of  the  legislature  of 
South  Dakota  passed  an  amendment  to  the  state  constitution  author 
izing   the   initiative  and   referendum,  which  the   people 
accepted.     Utah   took  the  same  course   the  next  year,    <Jfhteh|pread 
Oregon  in  1902,  Montana  in  1906,  Oklahoma  in  1907,  and    initiative 
eight  more  states  in  the  next  five  years.     To  remove  the    referendum, 
objection  to  the  system  that  the  people  are  too  busy  and 
too  ignorant  to  pass  on  intricate  problems  of  legislation,  Oregon  has 
adopted  a  device  whereby  on  all  measures  submitted  to  them  for 
approval,  the  people  are  "educated"  by  an  official  pamphlet  of  argu 
ments  pro  and  con.    At  present  about  half  the  states  have  the  initiative 
and  referendum  in  some  form. 

The  recall,  by  which  is  meant  the  power  to  remove  a  public  official 
from  office  by  popular  vote  at  any  time  during  his  term,  probably  orig 
inated  in  the  city  charter  of  Los  Angeles,  California,  in  1903. 


526  A  WORLD  POWER 

Seattle,  Washington,  adopted  it  in  1906,  and  it  was  made  state-wide 
The  recall  ^n  ^reSon  *n  1908.  To-day  hundreds  of  municipalities 
make  use  of  it,  and  it  is  a  state  provision  in  at  least  eight 
states.  Such  a  weapon  in  politics  lays  on  the  officials  a  heavy  sense 
of  responsibility  and  holds  before  them  a  high  standard  of  efficiency. 
In  order  to  protect  the  public  servants  from  persecution  at  the  hands 
of  their  enemies,  who  might  try  to  use  the  recall  many  times  against 
certain  officials  till  the  recall  should  finally  prove  successful,  Oregon 
made  a  rule  that  those  who  call  for  a  second  or  a  third  recall  election 
against  the  same  official  must  pay  the  expenses  of  those  elections.  Ari 
zona  tried  to  come  into  the  Union  in  1911  with  a  provision  in  her  state 
constitution  for  the  recall  of  judges.  Acting  upon  a  vehement  message 
from  President  Taft,  Congress  voted  to  admit  her  on  the  condition  that 
the  provision  be  stricken  out.  Only  by  consenting  did  Arizona  become 
a  state;  but  immediately  after  statehood,  she  put  the  clause  back  into 
her  constitution.  The  Progressives  in  their  national  platform  of  1912 
went  farther,  demanding  not  only  the  recall  of  judges  but  also  the  recall 
of  judicial  decisions.  The  more  conservative,  who  believe  that  the 
impartiality  of  judges  depends  upon  their  independence  of  popular 
clamor,  take  the  position  of  President  Taft  that  the  recall  should  not 
touch  the  bench  or  its  decisions. 

Along  with  the  movement  for  the  initiative,  referendum,  and  recall, 
has  gone  the  corresponding  demand  of  the  people  for  greater  partici- 
Direct  pation  in  the  management  of  political  parties.  The  con- 

primaries,  vention  system  of  nomination,  in  vogue  since  the  days  of 
Andrew  Jackson,  has  fallen  more  or  less  into  disrepute,  and  the  more 
democratic  system  of  direct  primaries  is  widely  advocated.  The 
convention,  it  is  alleged,  can  be  bought,  controlled  by  a  boss,  and 
managed  unfairly  by  the  arbitrary  control  of  the  presiding  officer,  in  the 
interests  of  a  single  candidate  against  the  interests  of  other  candidates. 
Experience  has  proved,  too,  that,  surrounded  by  thousands  of  spectators, 
easily  swept  into  excitement  by  appealing  oratory,  the  little  handful 
of  delegates  on  the  floor  of  a  convention  are  not  placed  amid  conditions 
suitable  to  the  sober  deliberation  and  judgment  with  which  the  can 
didate  for  an  important  office  should  be  chosen.  From  these  abuses 
direct  primaries  are  urged  as  a  means  of  escape.  In  them  the  people, 
by  casting  ballots,  as  on  election  day,  are  able  to  make  their  own 
nominations  without  sending  delegates  of  their  power  to  a  nominating 
convention.  Wisconsin  adopted  direct  primaries  in  1903,  Oregon  in 
1904,  Illinois  in  1905,  and  many  other  states  have  since  followed 
their  example,  some  for  nominations  to  state  offices  only,  some  for 
presidential  nominations  as  well. 


PROGRESSIVE  DEMOCRACY  527 

Another  movement  for  a  sweeping  reform,  looking  to  the  greater 
participation  of  the  people  in  the  affairs  of  government,  gained  ground 
first  in  the  West,  just  as  did  the  initiative,  the  referendum,  Woman 
the  recall,  and  the  direct  primary;  this  is  the  movement  suffrage- 
for  the  political  enfranchisement  of  women.  Women  in  the  United 
States  already  have  civil  rights;  they  are  generally  capable  of  owning 
property,  entering  into  contracts,  and  engaging  in  gainful  occupations, 
but  in  most  states  full  political  rights  are  denied  them,  though  many 
states  grant  to  them  the  privilege  of  voting  on  certain  matters,  such  as 
proposed  bond  issues,  school  matters,  and  municipal  affairs.  In  the 
territory  of  Wyoming  in  1869  full  enfranchisment  was  given  to  women 
under  the  same  conditions  as  to  men;  and  when  that  territory  became  a 
state  in  1890  the  same  provision  was  placed  in  the  state  constitution. 
Colorado  took  the  step  in  1893,  Idaho  and  Utah  in  1896,  and  from  1910 
to  1914  the  reform  was  adopted  by  Washington,  California,  Arizona, 
Kansas,  Oregon,  Nevada,  Montana,  and  the  territory  of  Alaska.  In 
Illinois,  the  entering  wedge  of  the  reform  east  of  the  Mississippi,  women 
enjoy  presidential  and  municipal  suffrage.  These  twelve  states 
together  cast  91  electoral  votes  out  of  a  total  electoral  vote  of  531. 
New  York  took  the  step  in  1917,  and  Michigan,  South  Dakota,  and  Ok 
lahoma  in  1918,  Massachusetts.  New  Jersey  and  Pennsylvania  defeated 
the  proposal. 

An  amendment  to  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  to  give 
suffrage  to  women  the  country  over  received  a  majority  of  votes  in 
the  United  States  Senate  in  1914  but  failed  of  the  requis-    The  question 
ite  two- thirds  vote;  in  January,  1915,  a  similar  amend-    of  woman 
ment,  proposed  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  failed  of    the  national 
a  majority;  but  the  friends  of  the  movement  derived  en-    Congress, 
couragement  from  the  close  vote,  which  showed  that  their  cause  had 
made  great  strides  within  the  last  decade. 

An  innovation  in  the  administration  of  municipal  affairs,  known 
as  the  commission  form  of  government,  originated  in  the  West  in  the 
first  years  of  the  twentieth  century  and  has  spread  rapidly    The  spread  of 
over  all  sections,   till   at  the  present  writing  over  four   tj?e  commis- 
hundred  cities  and  towns  have  adopted  it  with  modifica-    municipal 
tions.     Municipal  government  has  become  a  subject  of    government, 
increasing  importance  as  population  has  tended  more  and  more  to  the 
large  centers.     In  1910  thirty-five  per  cent  of  the  population  of  the 
United  States  lived  in  cities  of  25,000  or  more  inhabitants. 

When  Galveston,  Texas,  was  destroyed  by  a  tidal  wave  in  1900,  the 
voters  in  desperation  intrusted  the  confused  affairs  of  the  stricken  city 
to  a  cdmmission  of  five  men.  Inasmuch  as  these  men  were  not  re- 


528  A  WORLD  POWER 

quired  to  give  their  whole  time  to  the  city's  management,  and  could 
The  still  attend  to  their  own  private  affairs,  the  commission- 

Galveston         ers  were  secured  from  the  best  business  talent  of  the  city. 

The  experiment  was  an  immediate  success,  and  when  the 
crisis  was  over,  citizens  were  unwilling  to  go  back  to  the  old  regime. 
Other  cities,  groaning  under  the  corruption  of  their  municipal  adminis 
tration,  seized  upon  the  plan.  Details  differ  in  different  cities,  but 
the  essential  principle  is  the  concentration  of  executive  and  legislative 
power  and  responsibility  in  the  hands  of  a  few  men,  who  are  con 
stantly  under  public  scrutiny,  each  at  the  head  of  a  branch  of  city 
government,  such  as  law,  finance,  park  department,  etc.  Usually  the 
mayor  and  the  town  council  are  dispensed  with. 

Des  Moines,  Iowa,  was  among  the  first  cities  to  follow  Galveston's 
experiment,  and  its  special  type  of  commission  government  has  been 

widely  copied.  By  this  plan  the  initiative,  referendum, 
MolneTplan  an<^  reca^  are  adopted  along  with  the  commission  form  of 
and  the  city  government,  and  all  important  franchises  awarding  to 
manager  private  corporations  municipal  rights  or  powers  must  first 

be  approved  directly  by  the  people.  Direct  primaries  are 
in  vogue  for  the  nomination  of  officials,  and  every  official  represents 
the  entire  city  instead  of  a  single  ward.  The  five  commissioners  are 
required  to  give  all  their  time  to  the  municipality,  but  this  feature,  of 
the  Des  Moines  plan  has  been  subject  to  criticism  on  the  ground  that 
few  cities  are  able  to  pay  sufficiently  high  salaries  to  compensate  com 
missioners  for  abandoning  their  private  business.  In  1908  the  city 
manager  plan  was  evolved  to  meet  this  difficulty,  and  was  promptly 
put  into  operation  in  Dayton  and  Springfield,  Ohio.  It  aims  to  pro 
vide  for  the  management  of  the  city  strictly  after  the  manner  of  an 
up-to-date  business  corporation.  The  commissioners  under  this  plan 
are  not  required  to  devote  all  their  time  to  the  department  of  the  city 
government  over  which  each  presides,  but  a  non-partisan  expert  is 
hired  to  give  all  his  time  to  the  city,  to  have  general  control  over  the 
executive  business  of  the  city,  to  appoint  the  subordinate  officials,  deter 
mine  salaries,  etc.  At  least  ninety  cities  now  make  use  of  this  form 
of  government,  which  is  favored  by  the  National  Municipal  League. 

GENERAL  REFERENCES 

C.  L.  JONES,  Readings  on  Parties  and  Elections;  R.  S.  CHILDS,  Short  Ballot  Princi 
ples;  A.  H.  EATON,  The  Oregon  System,  and  The  Story  of  Direct  Legislation  in  Oregon; 
A.  M.  KALES,  Unpopular  Government  in  the  United  States;  W.  H.  TAFT,  Popular  Govern 
ment;  ROOSEVELT,  New  Nationalism. 


PROGRESSIVE  DEMOCRACY  529 

SPECIAL  TOPICS 

1.  IMMIGRATION.    LATANE,  World  Power,  285-303;  P.  ROBERTS,  Immigration;  A. 
S.  BERNHEIMER,  Russian  Jew  in  the  United  States;  E.  A.  STEINER,  Trail  of  the  Immi 
grant;  H.  P.  FAIRCHILD,  Immigration;  J.  W.  JENKS  AND  W.  J.  LAUCK,  Immigration 
Problem. 

2.  THE  MOVEMENT  FOR  DIRECT  GOVERNMENT.    W.  E.  WEYLE,  New  Democracy; 
A.  STICKNEY,  Organized  Democracy;  BEARD  AND  SHULTZ,  Initiative,  Referendum,  and 
Recall;  A.  L.  LOWELL,  Public  Opinion  and  Popular  Government;  G.  H.  HAYNES,  Elec 
tion  of  Senators;  C.  E.  MERRIAM,  Primary  Elections;  T.  ROOSEVELT,  The  New  Na 
tionalism;  W.  B.  MUNRO,  The  Government  of  the  United  States. 

3.  THE  LABORING  CLASSES.    H.  MAROT,  American  Labor  Unions;  R.  T.  ELY,  Labor 
Movement;  J.  R.  COMMONS,  ED.,  Trade  Unionism  and  Labor  Problems;  J.  MITCHELL, 
Organized  Labor,  and  The  Wage  Earner  and  His  Problems;  H.  W.  LAIDLER,  Boycotts 
and  the  Labor  Struggle;  F.  J.  WARNE,  Coal  Mine  Workers. 

ILLUSTRATIVE  MATERIAL 

B.  T.  WASHINGTON,  Up  From  Slavery;  UPTON  SINCLAIR,  The  Jungle;  W.  A.  WHITE, 
A  Certain  Rich  Man;  G.  E.  WOODBERRY,  My  Country;  M.  ANTIN,  The  Promised  Land. 

SUGGESTIVE  QUESTIONS 

Why  has  it  been  easy  for  immigrants  to  succeed  in  the  United  States?  Account 
for  the  prosperity  of  the  New  South  since  1865.  Account  for  the  rapid  growth  of  the 
western  cities  at  the  present  time.  What  were  the  benefits  of  the  large  aggregations 
of  capital  immediately  after  the  Civil  War?  At  the  present  time?  What  are  their 
evils?  What  are  the  benefits  and  evils  of  labor  unions?  How  do  you  account  for 
the  increase  of  direct  popular  government  since  1896?  Why  is  prosecution  of  the  big 
trusts  politically  popular?  Is  the  tariff  as  much  a  leading  issue  in  politics  at  present  as 
at  any  time  in  the  history  of  the  country?  Why?  Why  is  the  policy  of  conservation 
of  natural  resources  a  historical  necessity?  Why  is  it  difficult  to  enforce  the  civil  service 
law  when  a  new  administration  comes  into  power? 


CHAPTER  XXX 
THE  GREAT  WAR 

THE  FIRST  THREE  YEARS,    1914-1917 

IF  the  Spanish-American  War  set  the  door  ajar  for  the  entrance  of  the 
United  States  into  world  politics,  the  Great  War  of  1914-1919  flung  it 
The  out-  w^e  °Pen>  and  under  the  compulsion  of  moral  necessity 
break  of  the  the  nation  did  not  shirk  its  full  responsibility. 

After  having  been  the  storm  center  of  Europe  for  six  years, 
1908-1914,  during  which  period  it  was  ravaged  by  two  bitter  wars,  the 
Balkan  Peninsula  of  Europe  was  the  scene  of  a  fateful  political  murder, 
June  28,  1914,  when  Archduke  Francis  Joseph,  heir  to  the  Austro- 
Hungarian  throne,  and  his  wife,  were  laid  low  at  Sarajevo,  in  Bosnia. 
Although  the  assassin  himself  was  an  Austrian  subject  and  although  he 
had  committed  his  crime  on  Austrian  territory,  Austria  laid  the  respon 
sibility  for  the  deed  upon  the  neighboring  state  of  Serbia,  and  sent  an 
ultimatum  to  that  power  demanding  that  she  hunt  out  and  punish  the 
alleged  conspirators  and  allow  Austria  to  participate  in  their  trial  in 
the  Serbian  national  courts.  The  implied  impairment  of  her  sovereignty 
the  little  Slavic  state  rejected,  although  she  magnanimously  acceded 
to  Austria's  other  requests.  The  latter  then  declared  war  on  Serbia  on 
July  28,  and  when  the  great  Slavic  state  of  Russia,  always  interested  in 
the  affairs  of  the  smaller  Slavic  peoples  of  the  Balkans,  mobilized  her 
armed  forces  "solely  against  Austria-Hungary"  to  protect  Serbia,  Ger 
many,  the  ally  of  Austria,  with  which  power  Austria  had  had  a  complete 
understanding  since  July  5,  declared  war  on  Russia  on  August  i  and  on 
France,  Russia's  Ally,  on  August  3.  The  next  day,  after  Germany  had 
violated  the  neutral  territory  of  Belgium  in  her  rush  into  France,  Great 
Britain  made  a  declaration  of  war  against  Germany.  Turkey  and  Bul 
garia  threw  in  their  lot  with  the  Central  Powers,  while  Italy,  the  Ally  of 
Germany  and  Austria  in  the  Triple  Alliance,  finally  sided  against  her 
former  associates. 

Germany's  initial  step,  the  military  occupation  of  Belgium,  though 
necessary  to  her  plan  of  a  quick  conquest  of  France  and  a  more  leisurely 
The  first  attack  on  Russia,  was  her  greatest  mistake,  as  the  harsh 
year.  measures  which  she  used  against  the  Belgians  lost  her  the 

moral  support  of  the  world.    Her  armies  quickly  penetrated  to  within 

53° 


THE  GREAT  WAR 


531 


B  £   1    Gfol  °U   M 
*£        Br^sels      „. 


WESTERN  FRONT 

Farthest  Germ. advance  1914 —*•*** 
Battle  line  on  Jan.Tst.1915 

Scale  in. Miles 


fifteen  miles  of  Paris,  whence  they  were  driven  back  to  the  Aisne 
in  the  first  battle  of  the  Marne.  The  Russians  advanced  into  East 
Prussia  and  into  Austrian  Galicia  more  rapidly  than  had  been  expected, 
but  were  driven  back.  In  an  endeavor  to  cripple  Turkey  and  .to  help 


532  A  WORLD  POWER 

Russia,  the  English  landed  a  force  on  the  peninsula  of  Gallipoli  and  strug 
gled  for  six  months  to  gain  the  Dardanelles,  Constantinople,  and  the 
Bosporus,  the  open  door  of  Russia  to  the  sea  on  the  south.  Repulsed, 
they  withdrew  to  southern  Macedonia,  where  an  allied  line  of  defence 
was  set  up  along  the  so-called  Saloniki  front,  which  remained  to  the  end 
of  the  war.  Germany's  second  great  mistake,  the  sinking  of  the  British 
passenger  steamer,  the  Lusitania,  which  consigned  to  watery  graves  over 
one  thousand  innocent  victims,  men,  women  and  children  from  neutral 
as  well  as  belligerent  countries,  occurred  on  May  7,  1915. 

In  the  second  year,  1915-1916,  the  Central  Powers  completed  their 
occupation  of  the  Balkans  down  to  the  Saloniki  line  and  succeeded  in 
The  second  defeating  a  British  force  at  Kut-el-Amara  on  the  Tigris; 
year.  ^ut  tney  were  repuisecj  at  two  points  in  France,  at  Verdun 

with  the  loss  of  a  half  million  men,  and  on  the  Somme. 

A  sea  fight  off  Jutland,  the  only  considerable  naval  battle  of  the  war, 
left  the  British  in  command  of  the  ocean. 

In  the  third  year,  1916-1917,  down  to  the  entrance  of  the  United 
States  into  the  struggle  on  April  6,  1917,  the  most  important  events 
The  third  were  the  crushing  of  Rumania,  which  had  entered  the  war  on 
year.  fae  sj^e  of  Germany's  enemies,  the  Russian  Revolution, 

March,  1917,  which  ended  in  the  rise  of  the  anarchy  known  as  Bolshev 
ism,  and  the  great  German  retreat  on  the  western  front  to  the  Hinden- 
burg  line,  which  added  nearly  1,500  square  miles  to  the  area  occupied 
by  the  Allies. 

THE  UNITED  STATES  AS  A  NEUTRAL,  1914-1917 
For  the  first  two  and  one-half  years  of  the  war,  President  Wilson  urged 
upon  the  United  States  the  strictest  neutrality  and  held  his  country 
Neutrality  to  the  principles  laid  down  for  neutral  nations  in  Washing- 
declared.  ton's  proclamation  of  neutrality  and  now  generally  accepted 
as  international  law;  but  as  in  the  Napoleonic  and  in  all  other  wars, 
the  interests  of  neutrals  and  belligerents  clashed. 

The  most  serious  dispute  of  neutral  United  States  concerned  Germany's 
attempt  to  induce  the  rest  of  the  world  to  accept  new  rules  of  international 
Disputes  law  to  govern  the  conduct  of  the  submarine.  The  old  rules, 
many0?"  to  -which  President  Wilson  adhered,  providing  that  a  vessel 
Submarines.  of  war,  before  capturing  a  commercial  vessel  of  the  enemy, 
must  first  arrest,  visit,  and  search  her,  the  German  undersea  craft  dis 
carded,  claiming  that  to  conduct  the  usual  search  would  consume  time 
and  subject  the  delicately  constructed  submarine,  which  a  single  blow 
might  cripple,  to  the  possibility  of  sudden  attack  from  the  commercial 
vessel  standing  by;  and  accordingly,  without  the  customary  visit  and 


THE  GREAT  WAR  533 

search,  they  fired  their  torpedoes  with  little  warning  and  inhumanely 
forced  the  passengers  and  crew  of  the  sinking  victim  to  take  to  sea  in 
open  boats.  Later  they  frequently  gave  the  enemy  passengers  and  crew 
no  chance  at  all  to  escape  but  fired  at  sight.  Up  to  the  time  of  her  dec 
laration  of  war  to  save  her  honor,  the  United  States  lost  at  least  twenty- 
two  ships  by  the  cruel  and  illegal  German  practices,  together  with  hun 
dreds  of  lives,  most  of  them  on  the  ships  of  other  nations. 

Against  Germany's  assumption  of  the  right  to  mark  off  a  war  zone  on 
the  ocean  as  she  attempted  to  do  around  her  enemies,  President  Wilson 
contended  that  no  nation  could  warn  other  nations  away    n.  War 
from  any  particular  area  of  the  high  seas,  which  were  the    zones- 
common  property  of  all. 

The  partisans  of  Germany  alleged  that  the  United  States  was  guilty 
of  unneutral  conduct  in  allowing  her  manufacturers  to  sell  munitions 
to  the  Allies.  This  contraband  trade  reached  the  proportions 
of  a  great  industry  in  the  eastern  or  manufacturing  states,  munitions."1 
the  sales  amounting  to  billions  of  dollars.  Replying  to  this 
criticism,  Secretary  of  State  Lansing  pointed  out  that  all  belligerents 
had  equal  right  to  buy  in  American  markets,  and  that,  if  one  side  was 
deprived  by  har  enemies  of  the  ability  to  procure  munitions  in  these 
ports,  the  United  States  was  not  in  duty  bound  to  forbid  the  other  side 
to  come  and  buy.  Neutrals,  in  furnishing  munitions  to  belligerents, 
look  forward  to  the  time  when  they  themselves  may  be  belligerents  and 
wish  to  reserve  to  themselves  the  right  to  buy  of  nations  at  peace  at  that 
time.  If  this  were  not  allowed,  every  nation  would  be  forced  to  make 
heavy  preparations  for  war  in  time  of  peace.  Germany  and  Austria 
themselves  as  neutrals  had  sold  munitions  to  Great  Britain  during  the 
Boer  War. 

The  differences  with  Great  Britain  were  technical  and  never  involved 
charges  of  inhumanity,  for  it  was  not  the  practice  of  the  British  navy  to 
snuff  out  human  lives  as  they  enforced  their  blockade  of  Ger-  Disputes  with 
many.  Instead  of  throwing  a  stationary  cordon  of  snips  BiockadTand 
around  a  blockaded  port  as  had  been  the  custom  to  that  time,  continuous 
for  fear  of  mines  and  submarines  the  British  kept  their  block-  v°yase- 
ading  ships  always  on  the  move,  sometimes  hundreds  of  miles  away  from 
the  blockaded  port;  and,  also,  because  of  the  menace  of  the  mines  and 
submarines  they  took  their  captured  vessels  into  quiet  ports  and  there 
conducted  the  search  of  these  vessels  rather  than  on  the  high  seas.  To 
.  these  minor  changes  in  the  law  of  blockade  Secretary  Lansing  did  not  ob 
ject,  but  he  uttered  a  strong  protest  against  the  British  application  of  the 
doctrine  of  continuous  voyage  to  shipments  from  American  ports  to  neu 
tral  ports,  for  example,  those  in  Holland,  of  goods  intended  for  Germany. 


534 


A  WORLD  POWER 


Britain,  in  the  Napoleonic  wars  in  the  early  part  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
had  acted  on  the  theory  that  shipments  from  the  French  West  Indies 
to  the  United  States  and  thence  from  the  United  States  to  France,  did 
not  accomplish  two  voyages  but  one  continuous  voyage,  which  was 


THE  GREAT  WAR  535 

directed  to  the  enemy  country  from  the  beginning.  In  the  American 
Civil  War,  the  United  States  applied  the  same  principle  of  continuous 
voyage  to  contraband  goods  and  to  ships  going  from  England  to  Cuba, 
and  from  thence  to  the  Confederacy;  and  when  it  was  apparent  that  the 
British  practices,  1914-1917,  were  backed  by  these  strong  precedents 
and  approved  by  numerous  decisions  of  the  Suprerne  Court  of  the  United 
States,  the  case  of  the  government  against  Britain  seemed  to  be  weak. 
Not  only  was  the  dispute  not  pushed  to  a  settlement,  but  after  April, 
1917,  the  American  navy  itself,  under  Admiral  Sims,  joined  the  British 
navy  in  enforcing  the  British  view. 

In  November,  1916,  President  Wilson  was  re-elected  by  a  close  vote 
of  277  to  254  over  his  Republican  rival,  Charles  Evans  Hughes.  The 
bold  Democratic  slogan,  "He  has  kept  us  out  of  war,"  re-  Re-eiection 
fleeted  the  sentiments  of  the  majority  of  Americans,  who  felt,  of  President 
with  the  president,  that  the  time  had  not  yet  come  for  the 
United  States  to  cast  the  die  in  favor  of  war.  It  was  the  "unrestricted" 
campaign  of  the  German  submarines  early  in  the  next  year  that  brought 
America  to  her  decision.  President  Wilson's  war  message  to  Congress, 
April  2,  1917,  was  a  masterly  statement  of  America's  indictment  of 
Germany  and  a  ringing  call  to  "make  the  world  safe  for  democracy." 

By  the  purchase  of  the  Danish  West  Indian  Islands,  consisting  of  the 
three  considerable  islands  of  St.  Thomas,  St.  John,  and  Santa  Cruz, 
together  with  about  fifty  other  very  small  islands,  all  situated 
a  little  to  the  east  of  Porto  Rico,  the  United  States  on  March 
31,  1917,  consummated  territorial  acquisition  that  had  been 
desired  for  half  a  century.  Alaska  had  cost  two  cents  per  acre,  the 
Philippines  twenty-seven  cents  per  acre,  the  Canal  Zone  $35.83  per 
acre;  but  the  new  acquisition,  now  called  the  Virgin  Islands,  cost 
$25,000,000  or  $295  per  acre.  The  necessities  of  military  and  naval 
strategy  justified  the  high  price  paid  to  Denmark. 

THE  UNITED  STATES  AS  A  BELLIGERENT,  1917-1919 

Throughout  the  summer  and  fall  of  1917,  while  the  American  forces 
in  France  were  gathering  their  strength  preparatory  to  striking  a  blow, 
the  allied  cause  was  forced  to  see  the  rise  of  the  Bolshevists   Discourage- 
to  power  in  Russia,  their  surrender  of  their  country  to  the   Sfcom-age- 
Germans  in  the  treaty  of  Brest-Litovsk,  and  the  withdrawal    rnents. 
of  Russia  from  the  war,  the  humiliating  peace  forced  on  Rumania  by  the 
Germans  at  Bucharest,  and  the  retreat  of  the  Italians  to  the  Piave  after 
a  brilliant  advance  in  the  Alps,  all  sources  of  great  discouragement  to  the 
Allies.    The  latter,  however,  early  in  1917  had  conferred  the  supreme 
command  of  all  their  armies  on  General  Foch  of  France,  and  in  spite  of 


536 


A  WORLD  POWER 


the  reverses  elsewhere  faced  the  future  on  the  western  front  with  con 
fidence.  This  confidence  was  increased  when  at  the  end  of  the  year, 
three  days  before  the  Christmas  holiday  of  the  Christian  world,  English 
forces  under  General  Allenby  captured  Jerusalem  from  the  Turks. 

The  fighting  in  France  in  1917  brought  few  changes,  but  in  1918,  by  a 
new  plan  of  campaign,  which  involved  their  reaching  the  Channel  ports, 
separating  the  British  and  French  armies,  defeating  each  in 
turn,  and  then  occupying  Paris,  Germany,  in  a  series  of  five 
great  drives,  regained  almost  all  that  she  had  lost  by  her 
retreat  to  the  Hindenburg  line  during  the  preceding  spring  and  succeeded 


The  fourth 
year. 


^—Farthest  Italian  advance.          ••••Austrian  Invasian,  October,  1917 
ITALIAN  FRONT 

in  again  reaching  the  Marne  which  she  crossed  in  a  few  places.  The 
result  was  three  new  salients  or  wedges  thrust  into  the  allied  line,  the  first 
on  the  Lys,  the  second  in  Picardy,  and  the  third  on  the  Marne  near 
Paris.  Americans  of  the  first  and  second  divisions,  marines  as  well  as 
regular  infantrymen,  in  company  with  chosen  French  divisions,  in  July 
turned  the  enemy  back  and  saved  Paris  at  Chateau-Thierry  and  Belleau 
Wood,  which  were  the  farthest  points  reached  this  year  by  the  almost 
irresistible  wave  of  the  invaders.  This  opening  phase  of  the  second 
battle  of  the  Marne,  the  beginning  of  the  end  for  the  Germans,  was  the 
first  important  action  in  which  the  Americans  took  part. 


THE  GREAT  WAR  537 

Soon,  when  an  entire  sector  of  the  line,  extending  from  a  point  opposite 
Verdun  to  the  east  of  the  Moselle,  had  been  placed  in.  their  charge,  the 
Americans  displayed  their  fighting  qualities  by  the  brilliant  manner  in 
which  they  reduced  the  salient  of  St.  Mihiel,  which  had  existed  since  the 
first  year  of  the  war.  Of  this  action  General  Pershing,  the  The  st 
American  commander,  in  his  report  to  Secretary  of  War  Mihiel 
Baker,  writes  as  follows:  " After  four  hours  of  artillery  prepar 
ation,  the  seven  American  divisions  in  the  front  line  advanced  at  5  A.  M. 
on  September  12,  assisted  by  a  limited  number  of  tanks  manned  partly 
by  Americans  and  partly  by  French.  These  divisions,  accompanied 
by  groups  of  wire  cutters  and  others  armed  with  Bangalore  torpedoes, 
went  through  the  successive  bands  of  barbed  wire  that  protected  the 
front  line  and  support  trenches,  in  irresistible  waves  on  schedule  time, 
breaking  down  all  defense  of  an  enemy  demoralized  by  the  great  volume 
of  our  artillery  and  our  sudden  approach  out  of  the  fog.  ...  At  the  cost 
of  only  7,000  casualties,  mostly  light,  we  had  taken  16,000  prisoners  and 
443  guns,  a  great  quantity  of  material,  released  the  inhabitants  of  many 
villages  from  enemy  domination,  and  established  our  lines  in  a  position 
to  threaten  Metz.  This  signal  success  of  the  American  First  Army  in 
its  first  offensive  was  of  prime  importance.  The  Allies  found  that  they 
had  an  army  to  aid  them,  and  the  enemy  learned  finally  that  he  had  one 
to  reckon  with." 

General  Pershing  continues:  "On  the  day  after  we  had  taken  the  St. 
Mihiel  salient,  much  of  our  corps  and  army  artillery  which  had  operated 
at  St.  Mihiel,  and  our  divisions  in  reserve  at  other  points,  were  already 
on  the  move  toward  the  area  back  of  the  line  between  the  The  Argonne 
Meuse  River  and  the  western  edge  of  the  forest  of  Argonne.  f °reprepara. 
With  the  exception  of  St.  Mihiel,  the  old  German  front  line  tions. 
from  Switzerland  to  the  east  of  Rheims  was  still  intact.  In  the  general 
attack  all  along  the  line,  the  operation  assigned  the  American  army  as 
the  hinge  of  this  allied  offensive  was  directed  toward  the  important 
railroad  communications  of  the  German  armies  through  Mezieres  and 
Sedan.  The  enemy  must  hold  fast  to  this  part  of  his  lines  or  the  with 
drawal  of  his  forces  with  four  years'  accumulation  of  plants  and  material 
would  be  dangerously  imperiled." 

With  their  right  flank  protected  by  the  Meuse  and  their  left  by  the 
ravines,  hills,  and  thickets  of  the  Argonne  Forest,  the  Americans  began 
their  new  offensive  on  September  26,  and  did  not  cease  their 
terrible  fighting  till  November  6,  when  they  reached  the 
scene  of  the  German  victory  over  the  French  at  Sedan  in 
1870.  General  Pershing  says:  "On  the  6th,  a  division  of  the  ist  Corps 
reached  a  point  on  the  Meuse  opposite  Sedan,  twenty-five  miles  from  our 


538 


A  WORLD  POWER 


WESTERN  FRONT 

Battle  line  Mar.2I,I9I8 

Nov.  II,    " 

German  advance    " 

Scale  in  MUes 


/ine  of  departure.  The  strategical  goal  which  was  our  highest  hope,  was 
gained.  We  had  cut  the  enemy's  line  of  communications,  and  nothing 
but  surrender  or  an  armistice  could  save  his  army  from  complete  dis 
aster." 


THE  GREAT  WAR  539 

In  the  meantime,  by  Titanic  struggles  all  along  the  line  stretching 
from  the  American  sector  north  to  the  sea,  the  French  and  the  British, 
assisted  in  a  few  places  by  small  detachments  of  American 
troops,  pushed  the  Germans  back  day  by  day  until  on  No- 
vember  n,  when  fighting  ceased,  practically  the  whole  of  the 
strategically  important  Metz-Montmedy-Sedan-Mezieres-  Valenciennes 
Railroad,  referred  to  by  General  Pershing,  was  in  allied  hands. 

THE  ARMISTICE 

The  terms  of  the  armistice,  which  brought  about  the  end  of  hostilities 
at  eleven  A.  M.  on  November  n,  were  secured  by  the  Germans'  coming 
into  the  allied  lines  under  the  white  flag  and  asking  for  them.  Armistice 

To  prevent  the  Germans  from  renewing  the  war,  they  were    terms.  The 

\      ,  ,      ,  .  .         r6  .      German 

required  to  surrender  huge  quantities  of  armament,  ammum-    army  and 


tion,  stores,  railroad  engines  and  cars,  automobile  trucks,  air- 
planes,  tanks,  and  submarines.  Her  soldiers  in  the  trenches  were  allowed 
to  go  home;  allied  prisoners  in  Germany  were  to  be  released,  though  the 
German  prisoners  in  the  allied  countries  were  retained.  On  November  2  1  , 
in  the  bright  sunlight  of  the  afternoon,  9  German  battleships,  5  battle 
cruisers,  and  7  light  cruisers  steamed  silently  into  the  Firth  of  Forth  in 
Scotland  to  give  themselves  up.  Led  by  a  tiny  British  cruiser,  they 
passed  between  a  long  line  of  78  British  and  American  ships  of  war  drawn 
up  in  two-column  formation,  33  battle  ships,  9  battle  cruisers,  5  cruisers 
and  31  light  cruisers,  the  decks  of  all  the  allied  ships  stripped  for  ac 
tion,  their  battle  flags  hoisted,  ammunition  for  the  big  guns  piled  high, 
and  every  officer  and  man  ready.  It  was  the  allied  navies  '  greatest  day. 
Also,  under  the  terms  of  the  armistice,  the  Allies  stipulated  that 
they  should  occupy  all  German  territory  west  of  the  Rhine,  together 
with  bridgeheads  to  be  established  at  Cologne,  the  future  m  Gennan 
headquarters  of  the  English,  at  Coblenz  which  was  to  be  the  territory 
headquarters  of  the  Americans,  and  at  Mayence-  which  the  c 
French  made  their  headquarters,  to  a  distance  of  18%  miles  about  each 
city.  On  the  east  bank  of  the  Rhine  a  neutral  zone  was  to  be  marked  off, 
6^4  miles  wide,  between  the  armies  of  occupation  and  the  German  armies. 

A  MODERN  ARMY 

The  introduction  of  one  new  method  of  warfare  after  another  in  the 
course  of  the  Great  War  startled  the  world.    Trench  warfare    New 
was  developed  to  an  extent  before  undreamed  of;  continuous    methods  of 
fighting  day  and  night,  winter  and  summer,  was  a  phe 
nomenon  without  precedent;  while  camouflage  and  periscopes,  barrage 


540 


A  WORLD  POWER 


Airplanes. 


fire,  trench  mortars,  liquid  fire,  hand  grenades,  and  helmets  were  new 
terms  in  the  annals  of  modern  war. 

The  American  invention,  the  airplane,  furnished  new  eyes  to  the  army, 
directed  the  fire  of  batteries  at  objects  that  the  gunners  could  not  see, 
took  tell-tale  photo 
graphs  over  enemy 
lines,  and  dropped  death-dealing 
bombs  on  their  works.  The 
American  air  service  counted 
58,000  men,  possessed  over  10,000 
airplanes  mainly  of  foreign  manu 
facture,  brought  down  over  900 
enemy  planes  and  lost  over  260  of 
its  own  machines.  In  its  ranks 
were  sixty-five  "  aces,"  flyers 
who  brought  down  5  or  more 
enemy  machines.  Captain  Ed 
ward  V.  Rickenbacker  of  Colum 
bus,  Ohio,  the  premier  American 
ace,  won  26  victories  in  the  air. 

The  undersea  warfare  of  the 
submarine,  another  American  in 
vention,  was  no  less  romantic 
but  was  rendered  abominable  by 
the  practices  of  the  Central 
Powers,  and  deserves  to  be  dis-  GENERAL  JOHN  J.  PERSHING 

carded  forever.  Tanks  or  land  ships,  huge  moving  steel 
fortresses  capable  of  brushing  aside  trees  and  climbing  steep 
inclines,  were  conceived  of  by  English  army  experts  after 
viewing  the  demonstration  of  an  American  farm  tractor  in  Germany 
shortly  before  hostilities  opened  and  were  brought  upon  the  battlefield 
as  one  of  the  surprises  of  the  war. 

Of  poison  gas,  which  the  United  States  was  manufacturing  when  the 
armistice  came  in  larger  quantities  than  were  all  the  other  belligerents 
put  together,  an  army  expert  says:  "It  is  not  apparent  that 
Poison  gas.    the  Germans  started  the  war  with  the  intention  of  using 
poison  gas,  for  they  did  not  use  it  until  April,  1915,  and  then, 
despite  their  boasted  efficiency,  they  did  not  understand  the  effective 
ness  of  the  fiendish  stuff  they  were  using.     Had  they  done  so,  history 
might  make  different  reading  to-day.    For  instance,  when  they  first  used 
gas,  (it  was  chlorine  with  which  they  started  on  April  22nd,  1915,)  they 
waited  twenty-four  hours  before  following  up  with  a  bayonet  attack, 


THE  GREAT  WAR  541 

evidently  fearful  that  the  gas  had  not  dissipated.  ...  If  the  Germans 
had  attacked  within  an  hour  they  would  have  taken  Calais  that  day. 
There  was  nothing  to  stop  them.  .  .  .  Had  they  made  gas  in  sufficient 
quantity  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  war  would  have  ended  in  their 
favor  very  early.  There  is  no  doubt  in  my  mind  that  their  inability  to 
make  gas  in  sufficient  quantity  accounts  for  their  halt  in  their  last  great 
drive  last  summer  (1918)." 

Never  has  war  been  waged  on  such  a  colossal  scale.  General  March, 
the  American  Chief  of  Staff,  states  that  7,354,000  men  were  killed  or  met 
their  death  from  battle  wounds,  1,700,000  Russians,  1,600,000 
Germans,  1,305,000  Frenchmen,  800,000  Austrians,  706,000 
Englishmen,  460,000  Italians,  and  50,000  out  of  the  1,390,000  Americans 
who  reached  the  firing  line.  Two  million  Americans  were  sent  "across." 
In  the  four  years  of  the  American  Civil  War,  according  to  The  Historical 
Register  of  the  Armies  of  the  United  States,  the  number  of  battle  deaths  in 
the  Union  Army  of  2,325,000  was  110,000.  Secretary  of  War  Baker  is 
authority  for  the  statement  that  the  mortality  in  camps  brings  the  total 
number  of  deaths  in  all  the  armies,  1914-1918,  up  to  9,000,000. 

THE  ENLISTMENT.:  OF  THE  ARMY 

Hie  selective  draft  law,  under  which  24,000,000  men  between  the  ages 
of  1 8  and  45  were  enrolled  for  service,  2,800,000  actually  mobilized,  and 
2,000,000  more  held  in  immediate  reserve,  without  friction 
and  without  any  of  the  riots  and  bloodshed  of  the  Civil  War  £v!  dSt." 
period,  to  fight  an  enemy  3,000  miles  away  in  a  foreign  land, 
was  the  nation's  "  best  performance"  in  the  war,  claims  Provost  Marshal 
General  Crowder.  The  high  honor  in  which  the  call  to  arms  was  regarded 
and  the  cheerful  response  of  the  men  betokened  an  unselfishness  and 
patriotism  that  were  the  admiration  of  the  world.  The  nation  itself  was 
surprised  at  the  spirit  of  unity,  the  readiness  of  all  "to  do  their  bit,", 
of  all  but  a  few  slackers  and  deserters  who  unfortunately  in  great  crises 
ilways  refuse  to  submit  to  the  common  judgment  and  to  act  for  the  com 
mon  good.  The  vast  man  power  of  the  nation  was  classified  in  accordance 
with  military  and  industrial  needs,  to  make  a  great  army,  to  maintain 
the  normal  industrial  life  of  the  people,  to  speed  up  war  time  industries, 
and  to  pave  the  way  for  an  easy  return  of  the  men  to  their  normal  pur 
suits  after  the  war.  There  were  no  "substitutes,"  no  tendering  of  money 
to  the  government  in  lieu  of  service;  "work  or  fight"  was  the  spirit  of  the 
hour.  It  was  found  that  physical  defects  prevented  one-sixth  of  those 
examined  from  rendering  military  service  and  that  the  physical  powers 
of  the  average  American  begin  to  deteriorate  soon  after  he  reaches  the 
age  of  2 1  j  but  it  was  also  ascertained  that  the  native  born  were  of  higher 


542  A  WORLD  POWER 

physical  standard  than  the  foreign  born.  The  Provost  Marshal  General 
believes  that  the  vital  statistics  of  the  draft  will  eventually  be  the  means 
of  saving  more  lives  than  were  lost  in  the  war. 

CARE  OF  THE  SOLDIERS  AND  SAILORS 

Secondly,  the  same  spirit  of  unselfish  service  planned  and  cared  for  the 
soldiers  and  sailors  everywhere.    The  government  constituted  itself  the 

biggest  insurance  company  in  the  world,  selling  its  policies 
Risk  Bureau.  f°r  the  lowest  rates  ever  known.  In  a  certain  battle  in  France 

70  marines  met  their  death,  of  whom  57  were  insured  for 
$10,000,  one  for  $8,000,  and  12  for  $5,000,  a  total  obligation  of  $500,000 
on  the  part  of  the  United  States.  At  the  same  time  a  young  soldier  died 
of  pneumonia  in  a  camp  in  New  Jersey,  and  under  his  policy  $10,000  went 
to  his  mother  as  beneficiary.  By  taking  out  the  unique  policies  4,000,000 
soldiers  and  sailors  stimulated  their  bravery,  provided  a  sense  of  security 
for  their  dependents  at  home,  and  laid  for  themselves  the  foundations 
of  thrift  in  later  life  if  they  survived.  When  peace  came  the  government 
was  carrying  $37,000,000,000  worth  of  insurance,  almost  twice  as  much  as 
all  the  private  insurance  companies  of  the  United  States  put  together. 
Generous  compensations  for  injuries  and  disabilities  were  provided. 
Under  an  allotment  system  soldiers  remitted  to  relatives  and  dependent? 
at  home  many  millions  of  dollars  from  their  wages,  which  were  highei 
than  those  paid  to  the  soldiers  of  any  other  nationality. 

"Without  the  aid  of  the  American  Red  Cross  the  Army  Medical  De 
partment  could  not  have  done  its  work,"  says  Surgeon  General  Ireland. 

Millions  of  dressings  and  thousands  of  splints  were  given  out. 
Cross.60  There  were  Red  Cross  hospitals  in  addition  to  the  regular 

army  hospitals,  canteen  service  was  furnished,  the  search 
for  missing  men  was  unremitting,  letters  were  written  to  the  families  of 
those  who  were  killed  or  wounded,  over  1,500,000  French  refugees  were 
cared  for,  and  in  the  United  States  the  home  service  for  soldiers'  families 
in  trouble  was  maintained.  At  Christmas  time,  1917,  22,000,000  joined 
the  Red  Cross,  and  in  1919,  25,000,000.  The  tireless  fingers  of  thousands 
of  women  turned  out  more  than  10,000,000  sweaters,  socks,  mufflers, 
and  wristlets,  which  were  distributed  to  virtually  every  man  in  the  service. 
The  Junior  Red  Cross  enlisted  the  intelligent  and  sympathetic  support  of 
millions  of  boys  and  girls  in  the  public  schools,  and  taught  valuable  lessons 
in  patriotism. 

The  United  Nearly  nine  thousand  workers,  men  and  women,  carried  the 
War  Work-  red  triangle  of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  and  others  the  same  helpful 
ers*  spirit  of  the  Y.  W.  C.  A.,  the  Knights  of  Columbus,  the  Sal 

vation  Army,  the  Jewish  Welfare  Board,  the  American  Library  Associa- 


THE  GREAT  WAR  543 

tion,  and  the  War  Camp  Community  Service,  to  the  trenches  and  camps 
in  every  part  of  the  line,  busying  themselves  in  bringing  up  water,  food, 
and  supplies  to  the  soldiers,  in  administering  the  hundreds  of  rest  huts 
and  recreation  centers,  in  providing  books,  theatrical  performances,  con 
certs,  lectures,  and  moving  picture  entertainments,  in  stimulating  athletic 
contests,  and  in  sustaining  the  morale  of  the  righting  men  in  countless 
ways.  Almost  fabulous  sums  were  raised  for  the  work,  $170,000,000 
being  subscribed  on  one  occasion  in  the  fall  of  1918  for  the  United  War 
Workers,  as  these  agencies  were  collectively  designated. 

Medicine  made  great  strides  during  the  war.    Modern  treatment  of 
typhoid  fever,  developed  since  the  Spanish  American  War,  was  success 
fully  applied.    In  the  American  army,  with  a  daily  average  of   Medicine 
742,000  men  assembling  in  many  different  camps  in  a  period    and  sur- 
of  five  months,  there  were  only  119  cases  of  typhoid,  while,    gery" 
after  inoculation,  in  a  period  of  four  months,  there  were  only  ten  cases 
among  nearly  a  million  men.    The  persistence  of  pus  in  wounds  was 
practically  eliminated,  gangrene  conquered,  the  Carrel-Dakin  method 
of  treating  infected  wounds  by  irrigation  and  the  famous  Ambrine  treat 
ment  of  burns  perfected,  and  many  other  problems  solved  and  methods 
contrived.    "The  war  has  taught  us  how  to  save  more  lives  than  the  war 
has  cost,"  says  one  famous  surgeon. 

In  spite  of  the  advance  of  medicine,  however,  a  great  scourge  of  in 
fluenza  and  virulent  pneumonia  swept  the  world  in  1918.    In  the  close 
living  quarters  of    the    cantonments    and  in  the  crowded 
sections  of  cities  conditions  were  favorable  to  the  spread  of 
the  disease,   and   the  toll  exacted  throughout  the  United 
States  by  the  plague  far  exceeded  the  death  roll  of  the  United  States 
forces  in  the  war. 


COOPERATION  OF  THE  PEOPLE  AT  HOME 

Thirdly,  the  same  spirit  of  cooperation  in  the  public  service  which  ani 
mated  the  youth  of  the  land  to  respond  willingly  to  the  call  of  the  select 
ive  draft  and  inspired  the  various  national  agencies  to  care  for  their  needs, 
pervaded  all  classes  at  home,  where  in  every  community  zeal  The  Food 
for  the  public  good  reached  the  highest  point.  The  United  Administra- 
States  Food  Administration  made  many  regulations  concern 
ing  the  margin  of  profits  and  prices  of  food  products  which  were  cheer 
fully  complied  with,  and  with  equal  success  dictated  the  amount  of  sugar, 
flour,  and  other  products  to  be  disposed  of  to  individuals,  while  the  coun 
try's  surplus  products  and  more  were  shipped  to  the  needy  peoples  abroad. 
The  Americans  responded  to  the  need  of  the  hungry  world  and  not  only 


544 


A  WORLD  POWER 


rationed  themselves  in  the  midst  of  abundance  but  raised  food  products 
in  vaster  quantities  than  ever  before  by  individual  patriotic  efforts. 
The  United  States  was  literally  feeding  the  world  in  1918,  when  she  sent 
out  of  the  country  $2,000,000,000  worth  of  food  as  against  $500,000,000 
worth  in  the  year  prior  to  the  war.  The  volume  of  most  of  the  crops  in 
1918  went  beyond  the  five-year  average,  and  some  of  them  were  record 
crops,  as,  for  example,  spring  wheat,  barley,  and  rye.  Corn  fell  below 
the  average.  As  in  the  time  of  the  Civil  War,  when  the  Northern  States 


05O503O3O3OOOO 


Credit  Balance 

$3,050.000,000 

3.275,610,417 

3,090,975.766 

1,768,003,677 

324.348,049 

691,421,812 

501,144,938 

560,167,586 

303,354,753 

252,677,921 

636,461,300 

600,256,305 

477,741,862 

447,846,245 

648.796,399 

23,190,789 

34,104,822 


Total  T 

.  $9,200,000,000 

..9,180,605,307 

,7,874,306,436 

.5,326.077,067 

.3,902,900,051 

.4,276,614,772 

.4,217,291.048 

.3,624,885,906 

..3,429,163,055 

..3,203,719,369 

..2.869.209.534 

..3.346,596.025 

..3.118.745,006 

..2.806.135.345 

..2.307.095.827 

..1.626,529,483 

...1.680,900,274 


THE  FOREIGN  TRADE  or  THE  UNITED  STATES 

shipped  vast  surpluses  of  food  abroad,  chiefly  to  Great  Britain,  the  na 
tion's  agricultural  resources  now  proved  to  be  a  powerful  element  in 
maintaining  the  buoyant  and  hopeful  spirit  of  the  people  at  home  while 
at  the  same  time  they  profoundly  affected  conditions  abroad. 

An  important  phase  of  the  nation's  food  conservation  movement  was 
the  prohibition  of  the  use  of  foodstuffs,  grains,  and  fruits  in  the  manufac- 
The  prohi-  ^ure  °^  whiskey?  the  closing  down  of  the  brewing  of  beer,  and 
bition  finally  the  stopping  of  the  manufacture  of  wine.  The  sale 

int'     after  July  i,  1919,  of  all  intoxicating  liquors  for  beverage 
purposes  was  forbidden  until  the  demobilization  of  the  American  army. 


THE  GREAT  WAR  545 

This  war-time  prohibition  by  Congressional  legislation  added  impetus 
to  the  already  powerful  movement  for  national  prohibition  by  constitu 
tional  amendment,  and  in  1919  the  eighteenth  amendment,  embodying 
this  reform,  was  added  to  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  to  go  into 
effect  January,  1920. 

The  Fuel  Administration  controlled  the  consumption  of  coal  fixing, 
both  prices  and  quantity  to  be  consumed.    The  War  Indus-    The  Fuei 

tries  Board  fixed  the  prices  of  metals  and  of  steel  products,    Adminis- 

.  i        r         i  i-  •  tration  and 

and  bought  up  the  entire  supply  of  such  commodities  as  wool    War  Indus- 

and  copper  for  the  government.  tries  Board- 

Foreign  shipments  were  not  free  but  under  the  embargo  law,  resem 
bling  that  of  1808,  were  strictly  controlled  by  the  War  Trade    The  War 
Board;  which  in  some  cases  issued  sweeping  orders  prohibiting    Trade 
all    shipments  whatsoever   to   certain    countries,   at   times 
forbade  shipments  in  certain  commodities,  and  at  other  times  laid  its 
prohibition  on  individual  blacklisted  foreign  firms  believed  to  be  under 
enemy  control.    The  same  board  regulated  rates  in  the  ocean-carrying 
trade. 

Perhaps  in  no  other  line  was  the  patriotic  energy  of  the  people  shown 
to  better  advantage  than  in  the  shipyards,  where  the  need  was  indeed 
acute  if  the  natural  enemy  of  all  commerce-carrying,  the  sub 
marine,  was  to  be  withstood.  The  dependence  of  the  na-  pin|  Board, 
tion's  foreign  commerce  upon  the  carriers  of  other  nations, 
brought  about  by  the  Confederate  ships  of  war  during  the  Civil  War,  had 
its  natural  result  after  the  outbreak  of  war  in  1914,  when  these  foreign 
carriers,  sailing  under  foreign  flags,  were'  called  home,  and  only  a  few 
ships  remained  in  the  United  States  to  carry  American  goods  abroad. 
The  ravages  of  the  submarine  added  to  the  seriousness  of  the  situation. 
With  the  entrance  of  the  United  States  into  the  war,  the  United  States 
Shipping  Board  and  under  it  the  Emergency  Fleet  Corporation  acted 
with  such  energy  that  by  the  end  of  the  war  the  government  owned  or 
managed  1,386  vessels,  65  of  which,  including  the  giant  Leviathan,  were 
confiscated  from  the  Germans  and  Austrians  and  81  temporarily  im 
pressed  into  service  from  the  Dutch  because  of  the  necessities  of  war.  The 
successful  shipbuilding  program  of  the  government  was  turning  out  one 
wooden  vessel  per  day.  It  was  these  vessels,  aided  in  part  by  vessels 
flying  foreign  flags,  all  convoyed  by  allied  vessels  of  war,  that  carried 
to  Europe  the  2,000,000  American  soldiers,  their  immense  equipment, 
and  the  enormous  exports  of  every  kind.  The  United  States  now  bids 
fair  to  become  the  greatest  shipbuilding  and  ship-owning  nation  of  the 
world.  Certainly  it  has  wrested  from  foreigners  the  control  of  its  own 
ocean-carrying  trade,  lost  in  1861-1865. 


546  A  WORLD  POWER 

The  government,  by  act  of  Congress,  took  control  of  the  railroad  sys 
tems  of  the  country,  and  of  telephones,  telegraphs,  and  cables.  Whether 
The  Rail-  or  not  all  this  control  is  to  cease  with  the  restoration  of  peace 
ministra-  *s  a  °iuestion  for  debate.  Some,  while  admitting  the  wisdom, 
tion,  etc.  even  the  necessity,  of  the  invasion  of  the  realm  of  private 
industry  by  the  government  for  the  period  of  the  war,  insist  that  with  the 
close  of  hostilities  private  capital  should  be  allowed  to  resume  its  prop 
erty.  Others  contend  that  the  whole  trend  of  modern  life  is  toward  the 
extension  of  governmental  powers  for  the  common  good,  and  that  the 
United  States  should  to  some  extent  retain  the  public  utilities. 

Under  the  chairmanship  of  Ex-President  William  Howard  Taft,  the 
The  War  War  Labor  Board  settled  numerous  disputes  in  the  labor 
world,  and  contributed  greatly  to  the  success  of  the  govern 
mental  control  of  war  time  industry. 

FINANCIAL  MATTERS 

The  world's  war  bill  of  expense,  as  estimated  by  officials  of  the  War 
The  war  bill.  Department  of  the  United  States,  is  $197,000,000,000. 

The  American  public  was  informed  by  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  Mc- 
Adoo,  that  during  the  21  months  from  April  i,  1917,  to  December  31, 
War  finances  I9I^>  tne  tota^  disbursements  of  the  United  States  were 
of  the  United  $24,500,000,000,  and  that,  assuming  that  $2,000,000,000 
represents  what  would  have  been  spent  under  peace  conditions 
in  the  period,  the  total  cost  of  the  war  to  the  United  States  down  to  the 
beginning  of  1919  was  $22,500,000,000.  The  first  month  of  peace  after 
the  armistice,  the  last  month  of  the  period  considered  in  this  statement, 
was  the  most  expensive  of  all.  Two-thirds  of  the  vast  sum  the  govern 
ment  spent  on  its  own  account,  one-third  it  loaned  to  the  Allies.  Great 
Britain  received  about  $4,000,000,000,  France  $2,000,000,000,  Italy 
$1,000,000,000,  Russia  $325,000,000,  Belgium  $250,000,000.  According 
to  the  well-matured  policy  of  the  administration,  one-third  of  these  sums 
was  raised  by  taxation,  tariff  taxes,  income  taxes,  excise  taxes,  and  sur 
plus  profit  taxes,  and  two-thirds  by  popular  loans  from  the  people,  four 
great  Liberty  Loans  which  netted  $17,500,000,000.  The  fourth  Liberty 
Loan  of  4%  Per  cent  bonds,  September  and  October,  1918,  which  brought 
in  $6,980,000,000.  was  the  largest  loan  ever  floated  in  any  country.  The 
nearest  to  it  in  size  was  one  in  Great  Britain,  which  totalled  between  four 
and  five  billions.  A  fifth  loan,  a  Victory  Loan  of  $5,250,000,000,  par 
ticipated  in  by  12,000,000  subscribers,  was  raised  in  April,  1919.  The 
sale  of  $930,000,000  worth  of  War  Savings  Stamps  and  Thrift  Stamps 
down  to  the  end  of  1918  taught  lessons  of  patriotic  saving  and 


THE  GREAT  WAR  547 

economy    to   millions   of    people    in   every   state;    and    the   sale   still 
goes  on. 

"The  growth  in  resources  of  the  national  banks  in  the  last  five  years 
has  been  greater  than  the  increase  which  took  place  in  the  preceding 
twenty-five  years,"  said  the  Comptroller  of  the  Currency,    The  na_ 
when  he  reported,  December,  1918,  that  the  combined  re-    tional 
sources  of  these  institutions  fell  but  a  little  short  of  $20,000,-   l 
000,000,    "The  resources  of  the  national  banks  of  the  United  States  at 
this  time  exceed  the  aggregate  of  the  national  banks  of  issue  of  England, 
the  Dominion  of  Canada,  France,  Italy,  the  Netherlands,  Norway,  Swe 
den,  Denmark,  Japan,  and  Germany,  all  combined,  as  shown  by  their 
latest  available  reports.    The  year  1918  has  nearly  passed  and  thus  far 
there  has  been  no  failure  of  any  national  bank  in  any  state  east  of  the 
Rocky  Mountains,  and  only  one  failure  in  the  entire  country,  a  small 
bank  in  California.     There  has  been  no  such  immunity  from  (bank) 
failure  as  this  since  1870." 

The  advance  of  wages  and  prices,  the  former  lagging  behind  prices  as 
always,  was  one  of  the  signs  of  the  times,  and  partly  accounts  for  the 
enormous  sum  total  of  the  national  income  and  expenditure. 
With  the  country  on  a  gold  basis,  prices  1913-1918  rose  94 
per  cent,  as  compared  with  117  per  cent,  the  increase  from 
1 86 1  to  1865  when  the  country  was  on  a  paper  basis.  Wages  1861-1865 
went  up  43  per  cent;  what  this  increase  was  1914-1918  is  not  yet  clear, 
though,  on  account  of  the  labor  unions,  it  approached  far  nearer  the  in 
crease  in  prices  than  in  the  earlier  period.  Those  working  on  salaries  and 
not  protected  by  labor  unions  suffered  severely. 

ALIENS 

The  nation's  war  record  is  the  more  wonderful  since  it  was  achieved  by 
a  people  approximately  one-tenth  of  whom  were  unnaturalized  aliens. 
That  the  unassimilated  mass  must  have  participated  in  every    The  ques_ 
loyal  movement  cannot  be  doubted,  but  it  is  equally  certain    tion  of  the 
that  there  are  elements  of  danger  in  the  situation.    The  At-   aliens> 
torney  General  reports  that  6,000  enemy  aliens,  mostly  Germans,  were 
arrested  during  the  war  on  presidential  warrants,  the  equivalent  of  the 
"arbitrary  arrest"  of  the  Civil  War  period;  some  of  the  victims  were 
paroled  and  some  interned.    "It  is  the  duty  of  every  American  citizen 
who  loves  America,"  says  the  Deputy  Commissioner  of  Naturalization, 
"  to  seek  out  his  friends  and  acquaintances  of  foreign  birth  and  prevail 
upon  them,  if  they  wish  to  remain  here,  to  become  citizens." 

The  safety  of  American  institutions  demanded  another  stringent  step 
against  the  alien  enemies  of  the  country,  the  confiscation  of  nearly  a 


54^  A  WORLD  POWER 

billion  dollars'  worth  of  alien  enemy  property.  Leading  banks  and  in- 
The  Alien  surance  companies,  chemical  works  and  dye  works,  woolen 
Property  factories  and  metal  owning  corporations,  all  branches  of  in 
dustrial  life,  were  found  invaded  by  great  companies  owned 
and  managed  from  Germany  and  worth  in  all  probably  $2 ,000,000,000. 
Such  ownership  menaced  American  industrial  interests,  and  from  such 
centers  spy  work  was  easy.  Under  the  law  of  Congress  it  became  the 
duty  of  the  Alien  Property  Custodian  to  ferret  out  the  alien  control, 
seize  the  property,  and  dispose  of  it  at  auction  to  loyal  American  citi 
zens.  "I  want  to  Americanize  every  German  owned  industry  in  this 
country,"  says  the  Custodian.  "I  want  to  see  every  factory,  every  work 
shop,  and  every  manufacturing  plant  that  is  enemy  owned  placed  in  the 
hands  of  100  per  cent  Americans  for  all  time.  .  .  .  Long  before  the  war 
the  German  government,  through  its  agents  in  this  country,  sought  to  con 
trol  practically  every  important  and  essential  industry.  It  was  part  of  her 
plan  to  colonize,  subdue,  and  control  the  world.  ...  I  cannot  too  force 
fully  repeat  that  the  German  industrial  penetration  of  America  has  not 
been  a  mere  friendly  desire  to  trade  and  to  do  business  with  the  world. 
It  has  been  a  knife  at  the  throat  of  America."  The  claims  of  the  United 
States  against  Germany  for  indemnity  approximately  equal  the  sum  total 
of  the  confiscations  of  German  property  thus  far  made  in  this  country. 

THE  NAVY 

"The  greatest  naval  lesson  of  the  war,"  says  an  American  Admiral, 

"has  been  that  the  nation  possessing  the  most  powerful  navy  was  ablj 

in  a  few  weeks  to  drive  the  German  merchant  flag  from  th< 

lessons.  seas  an(^  to  ^eeP  °Pen  ^ier  own  trade  routes;  and  yet,  when 
the  war  commenced,  Germany  possessed  the  second  best 
navy  in  the  world.  It  proved  to  be  not  good  enough.  The  blockade, 
which  she  was  not  able  to  break,  was  the  greatest  contributing  cause  of 
her  ultimate  collapse."  The  American  navy,  in  performing  its  share  of 
the  naval  tasks  of  the  war  both  in  transport  service  and  in  blockade  work, 
suddenly  expanded  from  176  vessels,  manned  by  56,000  men,  to  1,800 
vessels  of  all  kinds  manned  by  435,000  men.  The  greatest  increase  was 
the  addition  of  300  submarine  chasers.  Forty-four  vessels  of  the  navy 
were  lost,  together  with  151  merchant  vessels.  It  is  from  the  navy  that 
the  great  merchant  fleet  of  the  Shipping  Board  will  be  manned. 

THE  PEACE  CONFERENCE 

The  Conference  of  the  Allies  to  determine  the  final  terms  of  the  peace 
treaty  assembled  in  Paris  in  January,  1919,  and  the  ensuing  treaty 
was  signed  by  Germany,  June  28,  1919.  President  Wilson  broke  an 


THE  GREAT  WAR 


549 


American  precedent  when  he  absented  himself  from  the  country  to  act 
as  an  American  delegate.  In  addition  to  the  adjustment 
of  affairs  immediately  arising  out  of  the  war,  namely,  the 
restoration  of  Alsace  and  Lorraine  to  France,  the  payment  by 
Germany  and  her  allies  of  an  enormous  indemnity  for  the  destruction 
wrought  in  France,  Belgium,  and  elsewhere,  the  erection  of  the  new  states 
of  Poland,  Czechoslovakia,  and  Jugoslavia,  the  enlargement  of  the 
Italian  boundaries  in  the  Alps  and  on  the  Adriatic,  and  many  other  ques- 


Photograph  from  Bain  News  Service 

MARSHAL  FOCH,  PREMIER  CLEMENCEAU,   PREMIER   LLOYD-GEORGE,  PREMIER 
ORLANDO,  AND  FOREIGN  MINISTER  SONNINO 

tions,  the  Peace  Conference  devoted  itself  to  the  drawing  up  of  a  Consti 
tution  for  a  League  of  Nations  designed  to  prevent  war. 

The  following  provisions  were  laid  down  for  the  League.  First, 
that  the  member  states  "undertake  to  respect  and  preserve  as  against 
external  aggression  the  territorial  integrity  and  existing 
political  independence  of  all  states  members  of  the  League."  Of  Nations6 
Whether  this  clause  would  destroy  the  guarantees  of  the 
Monroe  Doctrine  of  the  United  States,  which  has  always  warded  off 
European  interference  with  the  territorial  and  political  status  of  American 
states,  or  whether  it  strengthens  the  Monroe  Doctrine  by  extending  it 
to  the  world,  is  a  question  which  is  hotly  debated.  There  can  be  no  doubt 
that  it  will  afford  a  bulwark  of  defense  for  the  new  states  created  in 
Central  Europe.  Second,  that  the  League  provide  for  the  arbitration  of 
such  international  disputes  as  contending  states  deem  fit  for  arbitration, 


$50  A  WORLD  POWER 

and  for  the  enforcement  of  the  finding  through  the  threat  of  economic 
boycott  against  the  nations  refusing  to  honor  the  award.  A  form  of 
League  investigation  of  questions  in  dispute  is  also  contemplated.  Third, 
that  under  the  League  the  surrendered  German  colonies  and  certain 
backward  countries  like  Armenia  be  each  given  over  by  the  League  to  the 
care  of  a  single  state  as  mandatory,  responsible  to  the  League  for  the  ad 
ministration  of  law  and  order  within  the  territory  assigned  to  it.  Fourth, 
that  an  executive  council  composed  of  a  single  representative  of  each  of 
the  five  states  of  the  United  States,  Great  Britain,  France,  Italy,  and 
Japan,  and  four  other  members,  have  general  charge  of  the  administra 
tion  of  the  affairs  of  the  League,  assisted  by  a  meeting  of  delegates  made 
up  of  a  single  delegate  from  each  member  state.  The  plan  is  drawn  up 
in  general  terms  as  all  constitutions  must  be,  and  is  dependent  upon 
time  and  circumstances  for  interpretation  and  application. 

ANGLO-AMERICAN  RELATIONS 

While  the  ties  binding  the  United  States  to  France,  to  Italy,  to  Belgium, 
and  to  the  other  allied  countries  have  grown  strong,  the  most  important 
The  4th  of  Pnase  m  the  changed  foreign  relations  of  the  country  is  the 
July  in  complete  reconciliation  with  Great  Britain  which  the  war 
has  affected.  On  the  occasion  of  a  great  meeting  in  Central 
Hall,  Westminster,  London,  July  4,  1918,  which  cabled  "to  the  Presicfent 
and  people  of  the  United  States  their  heartfelt  greetings  on  their  142 
anniversary  of  the  Declaration  of  American  Independence" — the  first 
occasion  on  which  Great  Britain  and  London  have  officially  celebrated 
this  historic  event — the  Right  Honorable  Viscount  Bryce,  ex-British 
Ambassador  to  the  United  States  and  author  of  The  American  Common 
wealth,  and  the  Right  Honorable  Winston  Churchill,  member  of  the 
British  Cabinet,  delivered  memorable  addresses. 

Said  ex-Ambassador  Bryce:  "What  forces  have  brought  Britain  and 
America  again  together,  and  how  comes  it  that  in  the  fourth  generation 
another  King  George  is  joining,  on  behalf  of  his  people,  in  a 
celebration  of  to-day,  which  now  records  the  extinction  of  all 
the  bitterness  that  arose  in  the  days  of  George  III,  a  bitter 
ness  that  could  never  have  arisen  had  the  will  of  the  British  people  ruled 
in  1775  as  it  rules  to-day?  For  the  severance  came  because  we  had  then 
a  perverse  court,  and  a  non-representative  Parliament.  It  is  not  merely 
blood  relationship  that  has  brought  this  happy  consummation.  .  .  .  Our 
greatest  poets,  Chaucer,  Shakespeare,  Milton,  are  the  common  glory  of 
our  race.  Common  to  both  is  the  love  of  freedom.  .  .  .  With  the  love  of 
freedom,  and  as  its  proper  accompaniment,  Britain  and  America  have 
both  revered  the  moral  law.  .  .  .  The  national  heroes  of  both  have  been 


THE  GREAT  WAR 


551 


Photograph  by  The  Central  News,  Ltd.,  London 

KING  GEORGE  V  OF  GREAT  BRITAIN 

Greeting  the  captain  of  the  army  team  at  a  baseball  game 
played  in  London  by  teams  from  the  American  Army  and 
Navy.  Admiral  Sims  is  standing  by. 

men  who  were  great  for  their  courage,  and  by  their  sense  of  right  and  duty, 
from  King  Alfred  down  to  Washington  and  Lincoln,  whom  Britain  as  well 
as  America  counts  among  the  heroes  of  the  race.  .  .  .  Deep  down  in  the 
heart  of  each,  almost  too  deep  for  expression,  there  has  been  the  sense 
that  the  other  possessed  those  essential  virtues  by  which  nations  live: 


552  A  WORLD  POWER 

and  each  felt  a  secret  pride  in  seeing  that  the  other  retained  what  both 
felt  to  be  the  finest  characteristics  of  the  ancient  stock.  For  a  half  cen 
tury  the  sense  of  unity  had  been  growing  closer,  when  an  event  happened 
which  revealed  both  nations  to  themselves  and  to  one  another.  The 
German  government  suddenly  invaded  neutral  and  peaceful  Belgium. 
Britain  sprang  into  the  breach,  and  within  three  years  raised  an  army 
of  more  than  five  millions,  ten  times  as  large  as  that  she  had  when  the 
war  began.  Germany  followed  up  her  first  crime  by  perpetrating  upon 
non-combatants  and  neutrals  a  succession  of  outrages  unheard  of  before. 
It  was  then  the  turn  of  America.  We  in  England  have  scarcely  yet  real 
ized  the  magnitude  of  the  new  departure  which  America  took  when  she 
entered  the  war." 

Said  Winston  Churchill:  "I  am  persuaded  that  the  finest,  worthiest 
moment  in  the  history  of  Britain  was  reached  on  that  August  night, 

now  nearly  four  years  ago,  when  we  declared  war  on  Germany. 
Churchill.  Little  could  we  know  where  it  would  carry  us.  ...  What  is 

the  reward  of  Britain?  What  is  the  priceless,  utterly  unex 
pected  reward  that  is  coming  to  us  surely  and  irresistibly  in  consequence 
of  an  unstudied  and  unhesitating  response  to  the  appeals  of  Belgium  and 
France?  Territory,  indemnities,  commercial  advantages,  what  are  they? 
They  are  matters  utterly  subordinate  to  the  moral  issues  and  moral  con 
sequences  of  this  war.  Deep  in  the  hearts  of  the  people  of  this  island, 
deep  in  the  hearts  of  those  whom  the  Declaration  of  Independence  styles 
'our  British  brethren,'  lay  the  desire  to  be  truly  reconciled  before  all 
men  and  before  all  history  with  their  kindred  across  the  Atlantic  Ocean; 
to  blot  out  the  reproaches  and  redeem  the  blunders  of  a  bygone  age,  to 
dwell  once  more  in  spirit  with  our  kith  and  kin,  to  stand  once  more  in 
battle  at  their  side,  and  create  once  more  a  true  union  of  hearts,  to  begin 
once  more  to  write  a  history  in  common.  That  was  our  heartfelt  desire, 
but  it  seemed  utterly  unobtainable.  .  .  .  But  it  has  come  to  pass.  .  .  . 
We  seek  no  higher  reward  than  this  supreme  reconciliation.  That  is  the 
reward  of  Britain.  That  is  the  lion's  share." 


GENERAL  REFERENCES 

JOHN  BACH  MCMASTER,  The  United  States  in  the  World  War;  JOHN  H.  LATANE, 
From  Isolation  to  Leadership;  CHARLES  SEYMOUR,  The  Diplomatic  Background  of  the 
War;  FRIEDRICH  NAUMANN,  Central  Europe;  ROLAND  G.  USHER,  Pan  Germanism; 
PRINCE  KARL  LICHNOWSKY,  The  Guilt  of  Germany;  JAMES  W.  GERARD,  My  Four  Years 
in  Germany;  HENRY  MORGENTHAU,  Ambassador  Morgenthau's  Story;  JEAN  C.  BRACQ, 
The  Provocation  of  France;  JAMES  M.  BECK,  The  Evidence  in  the  Case;  GEORGE  Louis 
BEER,  The  English  Speaking  Peoples;  EDGAR  E.  ROBINSON  and  VICTOR  J.  WEST,  The 
Foreign  Policy  of  Woodrow  Wilson. 


THE  GREAT  WAR  553 

SPECIAL  TOPICS 

1.  THE  LEAGUE  or  NATIONS.     Special  Bulletin,  American  Association  for  Inter 
national  Conciliation,  March,  1919;  ABBOTT  LAWRENCE  LOWELL  and  HENRY  CABOT 
LODGE,  Joint  Debate;  Literary  Digest,  March  8, 1919;  New  York  Times  Current  History, 
IX,  Part  2,  395. 

2.  PRESIDENT  WILSON'S  RECEPTION  IN  EUROPE.    New  York  Times  Current  History, 
IX,  Part  2,  198. 

3.  THE  SURRENDER  OF  THE  GERMAN  FLEET.    New  York  Times  Current  History, 
IX,  Part  I,  382. 

4.  THE  SUBMARINE.    New  York  Times  Current  History,  IX,  Part  I,  255,  IX,  Part  I, 
487,  and  II,  409. 

5.  BELGIUM.     VISCOUNT  BRYCE,  Report  of  the  Committee  on  Alleged  German  Out 
rages;  CHARLES  P.  S ANGER,  England' 's  Guarantee  to  Belgium  and  Luxemburg;  New 
York  Times,  Current  History,  VIII,  Part  I,  511,  and  II,  551. 

[Hundreds  of  interesting  topics  can  be  followed  up  in  The  New  York  Times  Current 
History,  and  in  The  (London)  Times  History  of  the  War.] 

ILLUSTRATIVE  MATERIAL 

CONINGSBY  W.  DAWSON,  Carry  on,  The  Glory  of  the  Trenches,  Out  to  Win;  HERBERT 
G.  WELLS,  Mr.  Britling  Sees  it  through;  God,  the  Invisible  King;  Joan  and  Peter;  HUGH 
WALPOLE,  The  Dark  Forest;  BLASCO  IB/^NEZ,  The  Four  Horsemen  of  the  Apocalypse; 
JOHN  MASEFIELD,  Gallipoli;  HENRY  MALHERBE,  The  Flame  that  is  France  (translation); 
DONALD  HANKEY,  A  Student  in  Arms;  ARTHUR  G.  EMPEY,  Over  the  Top;  PHILIP 
GIBBS,  Soul  of  the  War;  IAN  HAY,  The  First  Hundred  Thousand;  Louis  RAEMAE- 
KERS,  America  in  the  War. 

SUGGESTIVE  QUESTIONS 

What  did  President  Wilson  mean  by  the  phrase,  "We  must  make  the  world  safe  for 
democracy"?  Briefly  sketch  the  historical  reasons  why  the  capture  of  Jerusalem  made 
such  a  powerful  impression  on  the  world.  What  was  the  part  of  Sedan  in  the  Franco- 
Prussian  War  of  1870-1871?  What  was  the  importance  attached  to  the  capture  of 
Paris,  Calais,  Constantinople,  and  Verdun  in  the  present  war?  What  are  the  arguments 
in  favor  of  government  control  of  industry  in  time  oi  war?  Draw  a  parallel  between 
the  economic  conditions  in  the  Northern  States  during  the  Civil  War  and  the  economic 
conditions  in  the  United  States  during  the  present  war.  Contrast  the  problems  of  re 
construction  in  the  two  cases.  What  are  the  arguments  in  favor  of  a  League  of  Nations? 
Was  the  unamended  draft  of  the  League  contrary  to  the  Monroe  Doctrine?  What 
has  been  the  effect  of  the  present  war  on  the  powers  of  the  National  government? 
Why?  Upon  the  powers  of  the  President?  Why?  What  were  the  arguments  in  favor 
of  conferring  the  supreme  command  upon  General  Foch?  What  has  been  the  impor- 
ance  of  railroads  in  the  war?  How  do  you  explain  the  loyal  support  given  to  Great 
Britain  by  her  colonies  1914-1919?  Has  Great  Britain  learned  the  lesson  of  the  Ameri 
can  Revolution?  What  is  the  effect  of  an  armistice?  Compare  the  embargo  law  of 
1917,  in  nature  and  in  effects,  with  the  embargo  law  of  1808.  Compare  France's  par 
ticipation  in  the  American  Revolutionary  War  with  that  of  the  United  States  in  the 
present  war. 


APPENDIX  I 

DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE 

In  Congress,  July  4,  1776, 

THE  UNANIMOUS  DECLARATION  OF  THE  THIRTEEN  UNITED  STATES 
OF  AMERICA, 

WHEN  in  the  Course  of  human  events,  it  becomes  necessary  for  one  people 
to  dissolve  the  political  bands  which  have  connected  them  with  another,  and 
to  assume  among  the  Powers  of  the  earth,  the  separate  and  equal  station  to 
which  the  Laws  of  Nature  and  of  Nature's  God  entitle  them,  a  decent  respect 
to  the  opinions  of  mankind  requires  that  they  should  declare  the  causes  which 
impel  them  to  the  separation.  » 

We  hold  these  truths  to  be  self-evident,  that  all  men  are  created  equal,  that 
they  are  endowed  by  their  Creator  with  certain  unalienable  Rights,  that 
among  these  are  Life,  Liberty  and  the  pursuit  of  Happiness.  That  to  secure 
these  rights,  Governments  are  instituted  among  Men,  deriving  their  just  powers 
from  the  consent  of  the  governed,  That  whenever  any  Form  of  Government 
becomes  destructive  of  these  ends,  it  is  the  Right  of  the  People  to  alter  or  to 
abolish  it,  and  to  institute  new  Government,  laying  its  foundation  on  such 
principles  and  organizing  its  powers  in  such  form,  as  to  them  shall  seem  most 
likely  to  effect  their  Safety  and  Happiness.  Prudence,  indeed,  will  dictate 
that  Governments  long  established  should  not  be  changed  for  light  and  tran 
sient  causes;  and  accordingly  all  experience  hath  shown,  that  mankind  are 
more  disposed  to  suffer,  while  evils  are  sufferable,  than  to  right  themselves 
by  abolishing  the  forms  to  which  they  are  accustomed.  But  when  a  long 
train  of  abuses  and  usurpations,  pursuing  invariably  the  same  Object  evinces 
a  design  to  reduce  them  under  absolute  Despotism,  it  is  their  right,  it  is  their 
duty,  to  throw  off  such  Government,  and  to  provide  new  Guards  for  their 
future  security.  —  Such  has  been  the  patient  sufferance  of  these  Colonies;  and 
such  is  now  the  necessity  which  constrains  them  to  alter  their  former  Systems 
of  Government.  The  history  of  the  present  King  of  Great  Britain  is  a  history 
of  repeated  injuries  and  usurpations,  all  having  in  direct  object  the  establish 
ment  of  an  absolute  Tyranny  over  these  States.  To  prove  this,  let  Facts  be 
submitted  to  a  candid  world. 

He  has  refused  his  Assent  to  Laws,  the  most  wholesome  and  necessary  for 
the  public  good. 

He  has  forbidden  his  Governors  to  pass  Laws  of  immediate  and  pressing 
importance,  unless  suspended  in  their  operation  till  his  Assent  should  be 
obtained;  and  when  so  suspended,  he  has  utterly  neglected  to  attend  to  them. 

He  has  refused  to  pass  other  Laws  for  the  accommodation  of  large  districts 

555 


5 $6  APPENDIX   I 

of  people,  unless  those  people  would  relinquish  the  right  of  Representation  in 
the  Legislature,  a  right  inestimable  to  them  and  formidable  to  tyrants  only. 

He  has  called  together  legislative  bodies  at  places  unusual,  uncomfortable, 
and  distant  from  the  depository  of  their  Public  Records,  for  the  sole  purpose 
of  fatiguing  them  into  compliance  with  his  measures. 

He  has  dissolved  Representative  Houses  repeatedly,  for  opposing  with 
manly  firmness  his  invasions  on  the  rights  of  the  people. 

He  has  refused  for  a  long  time,  after  such  dissolutions,  to  cause  others  to 
be  elected;  whereby  the  Legislative  Powers,  incapable  of  Annihilation,  have 
returned  to  the  People  at  large  for  their  exercise;  the  State  remaining  in  the 
mean  time  exposed  to  all  the  dangers  of  invasion  from  without,  and  convulsions 
within. 

He  has  endeavoured  to  prevent  the  population  of  these  States;  for  that 
purpose  obstructing  the  Laws  of  Naturalization  of  Foreigners;  refusing  to 
pass  others  to  encourage  their  migration  hither,  and  raising  the  conditions  of 
new  Appropriations  of  Lands. 

He  has  obstructed  the  Administration  of  Justice,  by  refusing  his  Assent  to 
Laws  for  establishing  Judiciary  Powers. 

He  has  made  Judges  dependent  on  his  Will  alone,  for  the  tenure  of  their 
offices,  and  the  amount  and  payment  of  their  salaries. 

He  has  erected  a  multitude  of  New  Offices,  and  sent  hither  swarms  of 
Officers  to  harass  our  People,  and  eat  out  their  substance. 

He  has  kept  among  us,  in  times  of  peace,  Standing  Armies  without  the 
Consent  of  our  legislature. 

He  has  affected  to  render  the  Military  independent  of  and  superior  to  the 
Civil  Power. 

He  has  combined  with  others  to  subject  us  to  a  jurisdiction  foreign  to  our 
constitution,  and  unacknowledged  by  our  laws;  giving  his  Assent  to  their 
acts  of  pretended  legislation: 

For  quartering  large  bodies  of  armed  troops  among  us : 

For  protecting  them,  by  a  mock  Trial,  from  Punishment  for  any  Murders 
which  they  should  commit  on  the  Inhabitants  of  these  States: 

For  cutting  off  our  Trade  with  all  parts  of  the  world : 

For  imposing  taxes  on  us  without  our  Consent : 

For  depriving  us  in  many  cases,  of  the  benefits  of  Trial  by  Jury: 

For  transporting  us  beyond  Seas  to  be  tried  for  pretended  offences: 

For  abolishing  the  free  System  of  English  Laws  in  a  neighbouring  Province, 
establishing  therein  an  Arbitrary  government,  and  enlarging  its  Boundaries 
so  as  to  render  it  at  once  an  example  and  fit  instrument  for  introducing  the 
same  absolute  rule  into  these  Colonies. 

For  taking  away  our  Charters,  abolishing  our  most  valuable  Laws,  and 
altering  fundamentally  the  Forms  of  our  Governments : 

For  suspending  our  own  Legislature,  and  declaring  themselves  invested 
with  Power  to  legislate  for  us  in  all  cases  whatsoever.  ' 

He  has  abdicated  Government  here,  by  declaring  us  out  of  his  Protection 
and  waging  War  against  us. 


APPENDIX   I  557 

He  has  plundered  our  seas,  ravaged  our  Coasts,  burnt  our  towns,  and 
destroyed  the  lives  of  our  people. 

He  is  at  this  time  transporting  large  armies  of  foreign  mercenaries  to  com- 
pleat  the  works  of  death,  desolation  and  tyranny,  already  begun  with  cir 
cumstances  of  Cruelty  &  perfidy  scarcely  paralleled  in  the  most  barbarous 
ages,  and  totally  unworthy  the  Head  of  a  civilized  nation. 

He  has  constrained  our  fellow  Citizens  taken  Captive  on  the  high  Seas  to 
bear  Arms  against  their  Country,  to  become  the  executioners  of  their  friends 
and  Brethren,  or  to  fall  themselves  by  their  Hands. 

He  has  excited  domestic  insurrections  amongst  us,  and  has  endeavoured 
to  bring  on  the  inhabitants  of  our  frontiers,  the  merciless  Indian  Savages, 
whose  known  rule  of  warfare,  is  an  undistinguished  destruction  of  all  ages, 
sexes  and  conditions. 

In  every  stage  of  these  Oppressions  We  have  Petitioned  for  Redress  in  the 
most  humble  terms:  Our  repeated  Petitions  have  been  answered  only  by 
repeated  injury.  A  Prince,  whose  character  is  thus  marked  by  every  act 
which  may  define  a  Tyrant,  is  unfit  to  be  the  ruler  of  a  free  People. 

Nor  have  We  been  wanting  in  attention  to  our  British  brethren.  We  have 
warned  them  from  time  to  time  of  attempts  by  their  legislature  to  extend  an 
unwarrantable  jurisdiction  over  us.  We  have  reminded  them  of  the  circum 
stances  of  our  emigration  and  settlement  here.  We  have  appealed  to  their 
native  justice  and  magnanimity,  and  we  have  conjured  them  by  the  ties  of 
our  common  kindred  to  disavow  these  usurpations,  which  would  inevitably  in 
terrupt  our  connections  and  correspondence.  They  too  have  been  deaf  to 
the  voice  of  justice  and  of  consanguinity.  We  must,  therefore,  acquiesce  in 
the  necessity,  which  denounces  our  Separation,  and  hold  them,  as  we  hold  the 
rest  of  mankind,  Enemies  in  War,  in  Peace  Friends. 

We,  therefore,  the  Representatives  of  the  united  States  of  America,  in 
General  Congress,  Assembled,  appealing  to  the  Supreme  Judge  of  the  world  for 
the  rectitude  of  our  intentions,  do,  in  the  Name,  and  by  Authority  of  the  good 
People  of  these  Colonies,  solemnly  publish  and  declare,  That  these  United 
Colonies  are,  and  of  Right  ought  to  be  Free  and  Independent  States;  that  they 
are  Absolved  from  all  Allegiance  to  the  British  Crown,  and  that  all  political 
connection  between  them  and  the  State  of  Great  Britain,  is  and  ought  to  be 
totally  dissolved;  and  that  as  Free  and  Independent  States,  they  have  full 
Power  to  levy  War,  conclude  Peace,  contract  Alliances,  establish  Commerce, 
and  to  do  all  other  Acts  and  Things  which  Independent  States  may  of  right  do. 
And  for  the  support  of  this  Declaration,  with  a  firm  reliance  on  the  Protection 
of  Divine  Providence,  we  mutually  pledge  to  each  other  our  Lives,  our  Fortunes 
and  our  sacred  Honor. 

JOHN  HANCOCK.1 

1  The  remaining  signatures  are  omitted. 


APPENDIX  II 
CONSTITUTION  OF  THE   UNITED   STATES 

WE  THE  PEOPLE  of  the  United  States,  in  Order  to  form  a  more  perfect  Union, 
establish  Justice,  insure  domestic  Tranquility,  provide  for  the  common 
defence,  promote  the  general  Welfare,  and  secure  the  Blessings  of  Liberty 
to  ourselves  and  our  Posterity,  do  ordain  and  establish  this  CONSTITUTION 
for  the  United  States  of  America. 

ARTICLE  I. 
SECTION,  i. 

i.  All  legislative  Powers  herein  granted  shall  be  vested  in  a  Congress  of  the 
United  States,  which  shall  consist  of  a  Senate  and  House  of  Representatives. 

SECTION.  2. 

1.  The  House  of  Representatives  shall  be  composed  of  Members  chosen 
every  second  Year  by  the  People  of  the  several  States,  and  the  Electors  in 
each  State  shall  have  the  Qualifications  requisite  for  Electors  of  the  most 
numerous  Branch  of  the  State  Legislature. 

2.  No  Person  shall  be  a  Representative  who  shall  not  have  attained  to  the 
Age  of  twenty-five  Years,  and  been  seven  Years  a  Citizen  of  the  United  States, 
and  who  shall  not,  when  elected,  be  an  Inhabitant  of  that  State  in  which  he 
shall  be  chosen. 

3.  Representatives  and  direct  Taxes   shall  be  apportioned  among  the 
several  States  which  may  be  included  within  this  Union,  according  to  their 
respective  Numbers,  which  shall  be  determined  by  adding  to  the  whole  Number 
of  free  Persons,  including  those  bound  to  Service  for  a  Term  of  Years,  and 
excluding  Indians  not  taxed,  three  fifths  of  all  other  Persons.     The  actual 
Enumeration  shall  be  made  within  three  Years  after  the  first  Meeting  of  the 
Congress  of  the  United  States,  and  within  every  subsequent  Term  of  ten  Years, 
in  such  Manner  as  they  shall  by  Law  direct.     The  Number  of  Representatives 
shall  not  exceed  one  for  every  thirty  Thousand,  but  each  State  shall  have  at 
Least  one  Representative;    and  until  such  enumeration  shall  be  made,  the1 
State  of  New  Hampshire  shall  be  entitled  to  chuse  three,  Massachusetts  eight, 
Rhode-Island  and  Providence  Plantations  one,  Connecticut  five,  New- York 
six,  New  Jersey  four,  Pennsylvania  eight,  Delaware  one,  Maryland  six,  Vir 
ginia  ten,  North  Carolina  five,  South  Carolina  five,  and  Georgia  three. 

4.  When  vacancies  happen  in  the  Representation  from  any  State,  the 
Executive  Authority  thereof  shall  issue  Writs  of  Election  to  fill  such  Vacancies. 

5.  The  House  of  Representatives  shall  chuse  their  Speaker  and  other 
Officers;  and  shall  have  the  sole  Power  of  Impeachment. 

558 


APPENDIX   H  559 

SECTION.  3. 

it  The  Senate  of  the  United  States  shall  be  composed  of  two  Senators 
from  each  State,  chosen  by  the  Legislature  thereof,  for  six  Years;  and  each 
Senator  shall  have  one  Vote. 

2.  Immediately  after  they  shall  be  assembled  in  Consequence  of  the  first 
Election,  they  shall  be  divided  as  equally  as  may  be  into  three  Classes.     The 
Seats  of  the  Senators  of  the  first  Class  shall  be  vacated  at  the  Expiration  of  the 
second  Year,  of  the  second  Class  at  the  Expiration  of  the  fourth  Year,  and  of  the 
third  Class  at  the  Expiration  of  the  sixth  Year,  so  that  one  third  may  be  chosen 
every  second  Year;    and  if  Vacancies  happen  by  Resignation,  or  otherwise, 
during  the  Recess  of  the  Legislature  of  any  State,  the  Executive  thereof  may 
make  temporary  Appointments  until  the  next  Meeting  of  the  Legislature, 
which  shall  then  fill  such  Vacancies. 

3.  No  Person  shall  be  a  Senator  who  shall  not  have  attained  to  the  Age 
of  thirty  Years,  and  been  nine  Years  a  Citizen  of  the  United  States,  and  who 
shall  not,  when  elected,  be  an  Inhabitant  of  that  State  for  which  he  shall  be 
chosen. 

4.  The  Vice  President  of  the  United  States  shall  be  President  of  the  Senate, 
but  shall  have  no  Vote,  unless  they  be  equally  divided. 

5.  The  Senate  shall  chuse  their  other  Officers,  and  also  a  President  pro 
tempore,  in  the  Absence  of  the  Vice  President,  or  when  he  shall  exercise  the 
Office  of  President  of  the  United  States. 

6.  The  Senate  shall  have  the  sole  Power  to  try  all  Impeachments.     When 
sitting  for  that  Purpose,  they  shall  be  on  Oath  or  Affirmation.     When  the 
President  of  the  United  States  is  tried,  the  Chief  Justice  shall  preside:   And 
no  Person  shall  be  convicted  without  the  Concurrence  of  two  thirds  of  the 
Members  present. 

7.  Judgment  in  Cases  of  Impeachment  shall  not  extend  further  than  to 
removal  from  Office,  and  disqualification  to  hold  and  enjoy  any  Office  of  honor, 
Trust  or  Profit  under  the  United  States:  but  the  Party  convicted  shall  never 
theless  be  liable  and  subject  to  Indictment,  Trial,  Judgment  and  Punishment, 
according  to  Law. 

SECTION.  4. 

1.  The  Times,  Places  and  Manner  of  holding  Elections  for  Senators  and 
Representatives,  shall  be  prescribed  in  each  State  by  the  Legislature  thereof; 
but  the  Congress  may  at  any  time  by  Law  make  or  alter  such  P-egulations, 
except  as  to  the  Places  of  chusing  Senators. 

2.  The  Congress  shall  assemble  at  least  once  in  every  Year,  and  such 
Meeting  shall  be  on  the  first  Monday  in  December,  unless  they  shall  by  Law 
appoint  a  different  Day. 

SECTION.  5. 

i.  Each  House  shall  be  the  Judge  of  the  Elections,  Returns  and  Qualifi 
cations  of  its  own  Members,  and  a  Majority  of  each  shall  constitute  a  Quorum 
to  do' Business;  but  a  smaller  Number  may  adjourn  from  day  to  day,  and  may 


560  APPENDIX    II 

be  authorized  to  compel  the  Attendance  of  absent  Members,  in  such  Manner, 
and  under  such  Penalties  as  each  House  may  provide. 

2.  Each  House  may  determine  the  Rules  of  its  Proceedings,  punish  its 
Members  for  disorderly  Behavior,  and,,  with  the  Concurrence  of  two  thirds, 
expel  a  Member. 

3.  Each  House  shall  keep  a  Journal  of  its  Proceedings,  and  from  time  to 
time  publish  the  same,  excepting  such  Parts  as  may  in  their  Judgment  require 
Secrecy;  and  the  Yeas  and  Nays  of  the  Members  of  either  House  on  any 
question  shall,  at  the  Desire  of  one  fifth  of  those  present,  be  entered  on  the 
Journal. 

4.  Neither  House,   during  the  Session  of  Congress,   shall,   without   the 
Consent  of  the  other,  adjourn  for  more  than  three  days,  nor  to  any  other  Place 
than  that  in  which  the  two  Houses  shall  be  sitting. 

SECTION.  6. 

1.  The  Senators  and  Representatives  shall  receive  a  Compensation  for 
their  Services,  to  be  ascertained  by  Law,  and  paid  out  of  the  Treasury  of  the 
United  States.     They  shall  in  all  Cases,  except  Treason,  Felony  and  Breach 
of  the  Peace,  be  privileged  from  Arrest  during  their  Attendance  at  the  Session 
of  their  respective  Houses,  and  in  going  to  and  returning  from -the  same;   and 
for  any  Speech  or  Debate  in  either  House,  they  shall  not  be  questioned  in  any 
other  Place. 

2.  No  Senator  or  Representative  shall,  during  the  time  for  which  he  was 
elected,  be  appointed  to  any  civil  Office  under  the  Authority  of  the  United 
States,  which  shall  have  been  created,  or  the  Emoluments  whereof  shall  have 
been  encreased  during  such  time;  and  no  Person  holding  any  Office  under  the 
United  States,  shall  be  a  Member  of  either  House  during  his  Continuance  in 
Office. 

SECTION.  7. 

1.  All  Bills  for  raising  Revenue  shall  originate  in  the  House  of  Representa 
tives;   but  the  Senate  may  propose  or  concur  with  Amendments  as  on  other 
Bills. 

2.  Every  Bill  which  shall  have  passed  the  House  of  Representatives  and 
the  Senate,  shall,  before  it  become  a  Law,  be  presented  to  the  President  of  the 
United  States;  If  he  approve  he  shall  sign  it,  but  if  not  he  shall  return  it,  with 
his  Objections  to  that  House  in  which  it  shall  have  originated,  who  shall  enter 
the  Objections  at  large  on  their  Journal,  and  proceed  to  reconsider  it.     If 
after  such  Reconsideration  two  thirds  of  that  House  shall  agree  to  pass  the  Bill, 
it  shall  be  sent,  together  with  the  Objections,  to  the  other  House,  by  which 
it  shall  likewise  be  reconsidered,  and  if  approved  by  two  thirds  of  that  House, 
it  shall  become  a  Law.     But  in  all  such  Cases  the  Votes  of  both  Houses  shall 
be  determined  by  Yeas  and  Nays,  and  the  Names  of  the  Persons  voting  for 
and  against  the  Bill  shall  be  entered  on  the  Journal  of  each  House  respectively. 
If  any  Bill  shall  not  be  returned  by  the  President  within  ten  Days  (Sundays 
excepted)  after  it  shall  have  been  presented  to  him,  the  Same  shall  be  a  law, 


APPENDIX   II  561 

in  like  Manner  as  if  he  had  signed  it,  unless  the  Congress  by  their  Adjournment 
prevent  its  Return,  in  which  Case  it  shall  not  be  a  Law. 

3.  Every  Order,  Resolution,  or  Vote  to  which  the  Concurrence  of  the  Senate 
and  House  of  Representatives  may  be  necessary  (except  on  a  question  of 
Adjournment)  shall  be  presented  to  the  President  of  the  United  States;  and 
before  the  Same  shall  take  Effect,  shall  be  approved  by  him,  or  being  disap 
proved  by  him,  shall  be  repassed  by  two  thirds  of  the  Senate  and  House  of 
Representatives,  according  to  the  Rules  and  Limitations  prescribed  in  the  Case 

of  a  bill. 

SECTION.  8. 

The  Congress  shall  have  Power 

1.  To  lay  and  collect  Taxes,  Duties,  Imposts  and  Excises,  to  pay  the  Debts 
and  provide  for  the  common  Defence  and  general  Welfare  of  the  United  States; 
but  all  Duties,  Imposts  and  Excises  shall  be  uniform  throughout  the  United 
States; 

2.  To  borrow  Money  on  the  Credit  of  the  United  States; 

3.  To  regulate  Commerce  with  foreign  Nations,  and  among  the  several 
States,  and  with  the  Indian  Tribes; 

4.  To  establish  an  uniform  Rule  of  Naturalization,  and  uniform  Laws  on 
the  subject  of  Bankruptcies  throughout  the  United  States; 

5.  To  coin  Money,  regulate  the  Value  thereof,  and  of  foreign  Coin,  and 
fix  the  Standard  of  Weights  and  Measures; 

6.  To  provide  for  the  Punishment  of  counterfeiting  the  Securities  and 
current  Coin  of  the  United  States; 

7.  To  establish  Post  Offices  and  post  Roads; 

8.  To  promote  the  Progress  of  Science  and  useful  Arts,  by  securing  for 
limited  Times  to  Authors  and  Inventors  the  exclusive  Right  to  their  respective 
Writings  and  Discoveries; 

}    9.   To  constitute  Tribunals  inferior  to  the  supreme  Court; 

10.  To  define  and  Punish  Piracies  and  Felonies  committed  on  the  high 
Seas,  and  Offences  against  the  Law  of  Nations; 

11.  To  declare  War,  grant  Letters  of  Marque  and  Reprisal,  and  make 
Rules  concerning  Captures  on  Land  and  Water; 

12.  To  raise  and  support  Armies,  but  no  Appropriation  of  Money  to  that 
Use  shall  be  for  a  longer  Term  than  two  Years; 

13.  To  provide  and  maintain  a  Navy; 

14.  To  make  Rules  for  the  Government  and  Regulation  of  the  land  and 
naval  Forces; 

15.  To  provide  for  calling  forth  the  Militia  to  execute  the  Laws  of  the 
Union,  suppress  Insurrections  and  repel  Invasions; 

1 6.  To  provide  for  organizing,  arming,  and  disciplining,  the  Militia,  and 
for  governing  such  Part  of  them  as  may  be  employed  in  the  Service  of  the  United 
States,  reserving  to  the  States  respectively,  the  Appointment  of  the  Officers, 
and  the  Authority  of  training  the  Militia  according  to  the  discipline  prescribed 
by  Congress; 

17.  To  exercise  exclusive  Legislation  in  all  Cases  whatsoever,  over  such 


562  APPENDIX   II 

District  (not  exceeding  ten  Miles  square)  as  may,  by  Cession  of  particular 
States,  and  the  Acceptance  of  Congress,  become  the  Seat  of  the  Government 
of  the  United  States,  and  to  exercise  like  Authority  over  all  Places  purchased 
by  the  Consent  of  the  Legislature  of  the  State  in  which  the  Same  shall  be,  for 
the  Erection  of  Forts,  Magazines,  Arsenals,  dock- Yards,  and  other  needful 
Buildings;  —  And 

f     1 8.   To  make  all  Laws  which  shall  be  necessary  and  proper  for  carrying 
/  into  Execution  the  foregoing  Powers,  and  all  other  Powers  vested  by  this 
^  Constitution  in  the  Government  of  the  United  States,  or  in  any  Department 
xor  Officer  thereof. 

SECTION.  9. 

1.  The  Migration  or  Importation  of  such  Persons  as  any  of  the  States  now 
existing  shall  think  proper  to  admit,  shall  not  be  prohibited  by  the  Congress  prior 
to  the  Year  one  thousand  eight  hundred  and  eight,  but  a  Tax  or  Duty  may  be 
imposed  on  such  Importation,  not  exceeding  ten  dollars  for  each  Person. 

2.  The  Privilege  of  the  Writ  of  Habeas  Corpus  shall  not  be  suspended, 
unless  when  in  Cases  of  Rebellion  or  Invasion  the  public  Safety  may  require  it. 

3.  No  Bill  of  Attainder  or  ex  post 'facto  Law  shall  be  passed. 

4.  No  Capitation,  or  other  direct,  Tax  shall  be  laid,  unless  in  Proportion 
to  the  Census  or  Enumeration  herein  before  directed  to  be  taken. 

5.  No  Tax  or  Duty  shall  be  laid  on  Articles  exported  from  any  State. 

6.  No  Preference  shall  be  given  by  any  Regulation  of  Commerce  or  Rev 
enue  to  the  Ports  of  one  State  over  those  of  another:   nor  shall  Vessels  bound 
to,  or  from,  one  State,  be  obliged  to  enter,  clear,  or  pay  Duties  in  another. 

7.  No  Money  shall  be  drawn  from  the  Treasury,  but  in  Consequence  of 
Appropriations  made  by  Law;   and  a  regular  Statement  and  Account  of  the 
Receipts  and  Expenditures  of  all  public  Money  shall  be  published  from  time 
to  time. 

8.  No  Title  of  Nobility  shall  be  granted  by  the  United  States:   And  no 
Person  holding  any  Office  of  Profit  or  Trust  under  them,  shall,  without  the 
Consent  of  the  Congress,  accept  of  any  present,  Emolument,  Office,  or  Title, 
of  any  kind  whatever,  from  any  King,  Prince,  or  foreign  State. 

SECTION.  10. 

1.  No  State  shall  enter  into  any  Treaty,  Alliance,  or  Confederation;  grant 
Letters  of  Marque  and  Reprisal;  coin  Money;  emit  Bills  of  Credit;  make  any 
Thing  but  gold  and  silver  Coin  a  Tender  in  Payment  of  Debts;  pass  any  Bill 
of  Attainder,  ex  post  facto  Law,  or  Law  impairing  the  Obligation  of  Contracts, 
or  grant  any  Title  of  Nobility. 

2.  No  State  shall,  without  the  Consent  of  the  Congress,  lay  any  Imposts 
or  Duties  on  Imports  or  Exports,  except  what  may  be  absolutely  necessary  for 
executing  it's  inspection  Laws:  and  the  net  Produce  of  all  Duties  and  Imposts, 
laid  by  any  State  on  Imports  or  Exports,  shall  be  for  the  Use  of  the  Treasury 
of  the  United  States;  and  all  such  Laws  shall  be  subject  to  the  Revision  and 
Controul  of  the  Congress. 


APPENDIX    II  563 

3.  No  State  shall,  without  the  Consent  of  Congress,  lay  any  Duty  of 
Tonnage,  keep  Troops,  or  Ships  of  War  in  time  of  Peace,  enter  into  any  Agree 
ment  or  Compact  with  another  State,  or  with  a  foreign  Power,  or  engage  in 
War,  unless  actually  invaded,  or  in  such  imminent  Danger  as  will  not  admit 
of  Delay. 

ARTICLE  II. 

SECTION,  i. 

1 .  The  executive  Power  shall  be  vested  in  a  President  of  the  United  States  of 
America.     He  shall  hold  his  Office  during  the  Term  of  four  Years,  and,  together 
with  the  Vice  President,  chosen  for  the  same  Term,  be  elected,  as  follows 

2.  Each  State  shall  appoint,  in  such  Manner  as  the  Legislature  thereof 
may  direct,  a  Number  of  Electors,  equal  to  the  whole  Number  of  Senators  and 
Representatives  to  which  the  State  may  be  entitled  in  the  Congress:   but  no 
Senator  or  Representative,  or  Person  holding  an  Office  of  Trust  or  Profit  under 
the  United  States,  shall  be  appointed  an  Elector. 

3.  The  electors  shall  meet  in  their  respective  States,  and  vote  by  ballot 
for  two  Persons,  of  whom  one  at  least  shall  not  be  an  Inhabitant  of  the  same 
State  with  themselves.     And  they  shall  make  a  List  of  all  the  Persons  voted 
for,  and  of  the  Number  of  Votes  for  each ;  which  List  they  shall  sign  and  cer 
tify,  and  transmit  sealed  to  the  Seat  of  the  Government  of  the  United  States, 
directed  to  the  President  of  the  Senate.     The  President  of  the  Senate  shall, 
in  the  Presence  of  the  Senate  and  House  of  Representatives,  open  all  the 
Certificates,  and  the  Votes  shall  then  be  counted.     The  Person  having  the 
greatest  Number  of  Votes  shall  be  the  President,  if  such  Number  be  a  Majority 
of  the  whole  Number  of  Electors  appointed;   and  if  there  be  more  than  one 
who  have  such  Majority  and  have  an  equal  Number  of  Votes,  then  the  House 
of  Representatives  shall  immediately  chuse  by  Ballot  one  of  them  for  Presi 
dent  ;  and  if  no  person  have  a  Majority,  then  from  the  five  highest  on  the  List 
the  said  House  shall  in  like  Manner  chuse  the  President.     But  in  chusing  the 
President,  the  Votes  shall  be  taken  by  States,  the  Representation  from  each 
State  having  one  Vote;  A  quorum  for  this  Purpose  shall  consist  of  a  Member 
or  Members  from  two-thirds  of  the  States,  and  a  Majority  of  all  the  States 
shall  be  necessary  to  a  Choice.     In  every  Case,  after  the  Choice  of  the  Presi 
dent,  the  person  having  the  greatest  Number  of  Votes  of  the  Electors  shall  be 
the  Vice  President.     But  if  there  should  remain  two  or  more  who  have  equal 
Votes,  the  Senate  shall  chuse  from  them  by  Ballot  the  Vice-President.1 

4.  The  Congress  may  determine  the  Time  of  chusing  the  Electors,  and  the 
Day  on  which  they  shall  give  their  Votes;  which  Day  shall  be  the  same  through 
out  the  United  States. 

5.  No  Person  except  a  natural  born  Citizen,  or  a  Citizen  of  the  United 
States,  at  the  time  of  the  Adoption  of  this  Constitution,  shall  be  eligible  to  the 
Office  of  President;    neither  shall  any  Person  be  eligible  to  that  Office  who 
shall  not  have  attained  to  the  Age  of  thirty  five  Years,  and  been  fourteen  Years 
a  Resident  within  the  United  States. 

1  This  paragraph  was  superseded  by  the  i2th  Article  of  the  Amendments. 


564  APPENDIX    II 

6.  In  Case  of  the  Removal  of  the  President  from  Office,  or  of  his  Death, 
Resignation,  or  Inability  to  discharge  the  Powers  and  Duties  of  the  said  Office, 
the  same  shall  devolve  on  the  Vice  President,  and  the  Congress  may  by  Law 
provide  for  the  Case  of  Removal,  Death,  Resignation,  or  Inability,  both  of 
the  President  and  Vice  President,  declaring  what  Officer  shall  then  act  as  Pres 
ident,  and  such  Officer  shall  act  accordingly,  until  the  Disability  be  removed, 
or  a  President  shall  be  elected. 

7.  The  President  shall,  at  stated  Times,  receive  for  his  Services,  a  Com 
pensation,  which  shall  neither  be  encreased  nor  diminished  during  the  Period 
for  which  he  shall  have  been  elected,  and  he  shall  not  receive  within  that  Period 
any  other  Emolument  from  the  United  States,  or  any  of  them. 

8.  Before  he  enter  on  the  Execution  of  his  Office,  he  shall  take  the  follow 
ing  Oath  or  Affirmation:  —  "I  do  solemnly  swear  (or  affirm)  that  I  will  faith 
fully  execute  the  Office  of  President  of  the  United  States,  and  will  to  the 
"best  of  my  Ability,  preserve,  protect   and  defend  the  Constitution  of  the 
"United  States." 

4  SECTION.  2. 

1.  The  President  shall  be  Commander  in  Chief  of  the  Army  and  Navy 
of  the  United  States,  and  of  the  Militia  of  the  several  States,  when  called  into 
the  actual  Service  of  the  United  States;  he  may  require  the  Opinion,  in  writing, 
of  the  principal  Officer  in  each  of  the  executive  Departments,  upon  any  Sub 
ject  relating  to  the  Duties  of  their  respective  Offices,  and  he  shall  have  Power 
to  grant  Reprieves  and  Pardons  for  Offences  against  the  United  States,  except 
in  Cases  of  Impeachment. 

2.  He  shall  have  Power,  by  and  with  the  Advice  and  Consent  of  the  Senate, 
to  make  Treaties,  provided  two  thirds  of  the  Senators  present  concur;  and  he 
shall  nominate,  and  by  and  with  the  Advice  and  Consent  of  the  Senate,  shall 
appoint  Ambassadors,   other  public  Ministers  and  Consuls,  Judges  of  the 
supreme  Court,  and  all  other  Officers  of  the  United  States,  whose  Appointments 
are  not  herein  otherwise  provided  for,  and  which  shall  be  established  by  Law: 
but  the  Congress  may  by  Law  vest  the  Appointment  of  such  inferior  Officers, 
as  they  think  proper,  in  the  President  alone,  in  the  Courts  of  Law,  or  in  the 
Heads  of  Departments. 

3.  The  President  shall  have  Power  to  fill  up  all  Vacancies  that  may  happen 
during  the  Recess  of  the  Senate,  by  granting  Commissions  which  shall  expire  at 
the  End  of  their  next  Session. 

SECTION.  3. 

i.  He  shall  from  time  to  time  give  to  the  Congress  Information  of  the 
State  of  the  Union,  and  recommend  to  their  Consideration  such  Measures  as 
he  shall  judge  necessary  and  expedient;  he  may,  on  extraordinary  Occasions, 
convene  both  Houses,  or  either  of  them, .  and  in  Case  of  Disagreement  between 
them,  with  Respect  to  the  Time  of  Adjournment,  he  may  adjourn  them  to  such 
Time  as  he  shall  think  proper;  he  shall  receive  Ambassadors  and  other  public 
Ministers;  he  shall  take  Care  that  the  Laws  be  faithfully  executed,  and  shall 
Commission  all  the  Officers  of  the  United  States. 


APPENDIX   II  565 

SECTION.  4. 

i.  The  President,  Vice  President  and  all  civil  Officers  of  the  United  States^ 
shall  be  removed  from  Office  on  Impeachment  for,  and  Conviction  of,  Treason, 
Bribery,  or  other  high  Crimes  and  Misdemeanors. 

ARTICLE  III.  % 

SECTION,  i. 

i.  The  judicial  Power  of  the  United  States,  shall  be  vested  in  one  supreme 
Court,  and  in  such  inferior  Courts  as  the  Congress  may  from  time  to  time  ordain 
and  establish.  The  Judges,  both  of  the  supreme  and  inferior  Courts,  shall 
hold  their  Offices  during  good  Behavior,  and  shall,  at  stated  Times,  receive 
for  their  Services,  a  Compensation,  which  shall  not  be  diminished  during  their 
Continuance  in  Office. 

SECTION.  2. 

1.  The  judicial  Power  shall  extend  to  all  Cases,  in  Law  and  Equity,  arising 
under  this  Constitution,  the  Laws  of  the  United  States,  and  Treaties  made,  or 
which  shall  be  made,  under  their  Authority;  —  to  all  Cases  affecting  Ambassa 
dors,  other  public  Ministers  and  Consuls ;  —  to  all  Cases  of  admiralty  and  mari 
time  Jurisdiction;  —  to  Controversies  to  which  the  United  States  shall  be  a 
Party;  —  to  Controversies  between  two  or  more  States;  —  between  a  State 
and  Citizens  of  another  State;  —  between  Citizens  of  different  States,  —  be 
tween  Citizens  of  the  same  State  claiming  Lands  under  Grants  of  different 
States,  and  between  a  State,  or  the  Citizens  thereof,  and  foreign  States,  Cit 
izens  or  Subjects. 

2.  In  all  Cases  affecting  Ambassadors,  other  public  Ministers  and  Consuls, 
and  those  in  which  a  State  shall  be  Party,  the  supreme  Court  shall  have  original 
Jurisdiction.     In  all  the  other  Cases  before  mentioned,  the  supreme  Court 
shall  have  appellate  Jurisdiction,  both  as  to  Law  and  Fact,  with  such  Excep 
tions,  and  under  such  Regulations  as  the  Congress  shall  make. 

3.  The  Trial  of  all  Crimes,  except  in  Cases  of  Impeachment,  shall  be  by 
Jury;   and  such  Trial  shall  be  held  in  the  State  where  the  said  Crimes  shall 
have  been  committed;   but  when  not  committed  within  any  State,  the  Trial 
shall  be  at  such  Place  or  Places  as  the  Congress  may  by  Law  have  directed. 

SECTION.  3. 

1.  Treason  against  the  United  States,  shall  consist  only  in  levying  War 
against  them,  or  in  adhering  to  their  Enemies,  giving  them  Aid  and  Comfort. 
No  Person  shall  be  convicted  of  Treason  unless  on  the  Testimony  of  two  Wit 
nesses  to  the  same  overt  Act,  or  on  Confession  in  open  Court. 

2.  The  Congress  shall  have  Power  to  declare  the  Punishment  of  Treason, 
but  no  Attainder  of  Treason  shall  work  Corruption  of  Blood,  or  Forfeiture 
except  during  the  Life  of  the  Person  attainted. 


566  APPENDIX   II 

ARTICLE  IV. 
SECTION,  i. 

i.  Full  Faith  and  Credit  shall  be  given  in  each  State  to  the  public  Acts, 
Records,  and  judicial  Proceedings  of  every  other  State.  And  the  Congress 
may  by  general  Laws  prescribe  the  Manner  in  which  such  Acts,  Records  and 
Proceedings  shall  be  proved,  and  the  Effect  thereof. 

SECTION.  2. 

1.  The  Citizens  of  each  State  shall  be  entitled  to  all  Privileges  and  Immu 
nities  of  Citizens  in  the  several  States. 

2.  A  person  charged  in  any  State  with  Treason,  Felony,  or  other  Crime, 
who  shall  flee  from  Justice,  and  be  found  in  another  State,  shall  on  Demand 
of  the  executive  Authority  of  the  State  from  which  he  fled,  be  delivered  up  to 
be  removed  to  the  State  having  Jurisdiction  of  the  Crime. 

3.  No  Person  held  to  Service  or  Labour  in  one  State,  under  the  Laws  there 
of,  escaping  into  another,  shall,  in  Consequence  of  any  Law  or  Regulation 
therein,  be  discharged  from  such  Service  or  Labour,  but  shall  be  delivered  up 
on  Claim  of  the  Party  to  whom  such  Service  or  Labour  may  be  due. 

SECTION.  3. 

1.  New  States  may  be  admitted  by  the  Congress  into  this  Union;  but  no 
new  State  shall  be  formed  or  erected  within  the  Jurisdiction  of  any  other  State; 
nor  any  State  be  formed  by  the  Junction  of  two  or  more  States,  or  Parts  of 
States,  without  the  Consent  of  the  Legislatures  of  the  States  concerned  as 
well  as  of  the  Congress. 

2.  The  Congress  shall  have  Power  to  dispose  of  and  make  all  needful 
Rules  and  Regulations  respecting  the  Territory  or  other  Property  belonging 
to  the  United  States;  and  nothing  in  this  Constitution  shall  be  so  construed  as 
to  Prejudice  any  Claims  of  the  United  States,  or  of  any  particular  State. 

SECTION.  4. 

i.  The  United  States  shall  guarantee  to  every  State  in  this  Union  a  Repub 
lican  Form  of  Government,  and  shall  protect  each  of  them  against  Invasion; 
and  on  Application  of  the  Legislature,  or  of  the  Executive  (when  the  Legislature 
cannot  be  convened)  against  domestic  Violence. 

ARTICLE  V. 

i.  The  Congress,  whenever  two  thirds  of  both  Houses  shall  deem  it  neces 
sary,  shall  propose  Amendments  to  this  Constitution,  or,  on  the  Application 
of  the  Legislatures  of  two  thirds  of  the  several  States,  shall  call  a  Convention  for 
proposing  Amendments,  which,  in  either  Case,  shall  be  valid  to  all  Intents 
and  Purposes,  as  Part  of  this  Constitution,  when  ratified  by  the  Legislatures 
of  three  fourths  of  the  several  States,  or  by  Conventions  in  three  fourths  thereof, 
as  the  one  or  the  other  Mode  of  Ratification  may  be  proposed  by  the  Congress,' 


APPENDIX   II  567 

Provided  that  no  Amendment  which  may  be  made  prior  to  the  Year  One  thou 
sand  eight  hundred  and  eight  shall  in  any  Manner  affect  the  first  and  fourth 
Clauses  in  the  Ninth  Section  of  the  first  Article;  and  that  no  State,  without 
its  Consent,  shall  be  deprived  of  its  equal  Suffrage  in  the  Senate. 

ARTICLE  VI. 

1.  All  Debts  contracted  and  Engagements  entered  into,  before  the  Adop 
tion  of  this  Constitution,  shall  be  as  valid  against  the  United  States  under  this 
Constitution,  as  under  the  Confederation. 

2.  This  Constitution,  and  the  Laws  of  the  United  States  which  shall  be 
made  in  Pursuance  thereof;   and  all  Treaties  made,  or  which  shall  be  made, 
under  the  Authority  of  the  United  States,  shall  be  the  supreme  Law  of  the 
Land;   and  the  Judges  in  every  State  shall  be  bound  thereby,  any  Thing  in 
the  Constitution  or  Laws  of  any  State  to  the  Contrary  notwithstanding. 

3.  The  Senators  and  Representatives  before  mentioned,  and  the  Members 
of  the  several  State  Legislatures,  and  all  executive  and  judicial  Officers,  both 
of  the  United  States  and  of  the  several  States,  shall  be  bound  by  Oath  or 
Affirmation,  to  support  this  Constitution;    but  no  religious  Test  shall  ever 
be  required  as  a  Qualification  to  any  Office  or  public  Trust  under  the  United 
States. 

ARTICLE  VII. 

i.  The  Ratification  of  the  Conventions  of  nine  States,  shall  be  sufficient 
for  the  Establishment  of  this  Constitution  between  the  States  so  ratifying 
the  Same. 

DONE  in  Convention  by  the  Unanimous  Consent  of  the  States  present  the 
Seventeenth  Day  of  September  in  the  Year  of  our  Lord  one  thousand 
seven  hundred  and  Eighty  seven  and  of  the  Independence  of  the  United 
States  of  America  the  Twelfth.  In  Witness  whereof  We  have  hereunto 
subscribed  our  Names, 

G?  WASHINGTON  — 

Presidt,  and  Deputy  from  Virginia  * 


ARTICLES  IN  ADDITION  TO,   AND   AMENDMENT  OF, 
THE   CONSTITUTION. 

ARTICLE  I. 

Congress  shall  make  no  law  respecting  an  establishment  of  religion,  or 
prohibiting  the  free  exercise  thereof;  or  abridging  the  freedom  of  speech,  or 
of  the  press;  or  the  right  of  the  people  peaceably  to  assemble,  and  to  petition 
the  Government  for  a  redress  of  grievances. 

1  The  remaining  signatures  are  omitted. 


568  APPENDIX   II 

ARTICLE  II. 

A  well  regulated  Militia,  being  necessary  to  the  security  of  a  free  State, 
the  right  of  the  people  to  keep  and  bear  Arms,  shall  not  be  infringed. 

ARTICLE  III. 

No  Soldier  shall,  in  time  of  peace  be  quartered  in  any  house,  without  the 
consent  of  the  Owner,  nor  in  time  of  war,  but  in  a  manner  to  be  prescribed  by 
law. 

ARTICLE  IV. 

The  right  of  the  people  to  be  secure  in  their  persons,  houses,  papers,  and 
effects,  against  unreasonable  searches  and  seizures,  shall  not  be  violated,  and 
no  Warrants  shall  issue,  but  upon  probable  cause,  supported  by  Oath  or  affir 
mation,  and  particularly  describing  the  place  to  be  searched,  and  the  persons 
or  things  to  be  seized. 

ARTICLE  V. 

No  person  shall  be  held  to  answer  for  a  capital,  or  otherwise  infamous 
crime,  unless  on  a  presentment  or  indictment  of  a  Grand  Jury,  except  in  cases 
arising  in  the  land  or  naval  forces,  or  in  the  Militia,  when  in  actual  service 
in  time  of  War  or  in  public  danger;  nor  shall  any  person  be  subject  for  the 
same  offence  to  be  twice  put  in  jeopardy  of  life  or  limb;  nor  shall  be  compelled 
in  any  Criminal  Case  to  be  a  witness  against  himself,  nor  be  deprived  of  life, 
liberty,  or  property,  without  due  process  of  law;  nor  shall  private  property 
be  taken  for  public  use,  without  just  compensation. 

ARTICLE  VI. 

In  all  criminal  prosecutions,  the  accused  shall  enjoy  the  right  to  a  speedy 
and  public  trial,  by  an  impartial  jury  of  the  State  and  district  wherein  the  crime 
shall  have  been  committed,  which  district  shall  have  been  previously  ascer 
tained  by  law,  and  to  be  informed  of  the  nature  and  cause  of  the  accusation; 
to  be  confronted  with  the  witnesses  against  him;  to  have  compulsory  process 
for  obtaining  Witnesses  in  his  favor,  and  to  have  the  Assistance  of  Counsel 
for  his  defence. 

ARTICLE  VII. 

In  suits  at  common  law,  where  the  value  in  controversy  shall  exceed  twenty 
dollars,  the  right  of  trial  by  jury  shall  be  preserved,  and  no  fact  tried  by  a  jury 
shall  be  otherwise  re-examined  in  any  Court  of  the  United  States,  than  accord 
ing  to  the  rules  of  the  common  law. 

ARTICLE  VIII. 

Excessive  bail  shall  not  be  required,  nor  excessive  fines  imposed,  nor  cruel 
and  unusual  punishments  inflicted. 


APPENDIX  II  569 

ARTICLE  IX. 

The  enumeration  in  the  Constitution,  of  certain  rights,  shall  not  be  con 
strued  to  deny  or  disparage  others  retained  by  the  people. 

ARTICLE  X. 

The  powers  not  delegated  to  the  United  States  by  the  Constitution,  nor 
prohibited  by  it  to  the  States,  are  reserved  to  the  States  respectively,  or  to  the 
people.1 

ARTICLE  XI. 

The  Judicial  power  of  the  United  States  shall  not  be  construed  to  extend 
to  any  suit  in  law  or  equity,  commenced  or  prosecuted  against  one  of  the 
United  States  by  Citizens  of  another  State,  or  by  Citizens  or  Subjects  of  any 
Foreign  State.2 

ARTICLE  XII. 

The  Electors  shall  meet  in  their  respective  states,  and  vote  by  ballot  for 
President  and  Vice-President,  one  of  whom,  at  least,  shall  not  be  an  inhabitant 
of  the  same  state  with  themselves;  they  shall  name  in  their  ballots  the  person 
voted  for  as  President,  and  in  distinct  ballots  the  person  voted  for  as  Vice- 
President,  and  they  shall  make  distinct  lists  of  all  persons  voted  for  as  Presi 
dent,  and  of  all  persons  voted  for  as  Vice-President,  and  of  the  number  of 
votes  for  each,  which  lists  they  shall  sign  and  certify,  and  transmit  sealed  to 
the  seat  of  the  government  of  the  United  States,  directed  to  the  President  of 
the  Senate;  —  The  President  of  the  Senate  shall,  in  presence  of  the  Senate  and 
House  of  Representatives,  open  all  the  certificates  and  the  votes  shall  then  be 
counted;  —  The  person  having  the  greatest  number  of  votes  for  President, 
shall  be  the  President,  if  such  number  be  a  majority  of  the  whole  number  of 
Electors  appointed;  and  if  no  person  have  such  majority,  then  from  the  persons 
having  the  highest  numbers  not  exceeding  three  on  the  list  of  those  voted  for 
as  President,  the  House  of  Representatives  shall  choose  immediately,  by  ballot, 
the  President.  But  in  choosing  the  President,  the  votes  shall  be  taken  by 
states,  the  representation  from  each  state  having  one  vote;  a  quorum  for  this 
purpose  shall  consist  of  a  member  or  members  from  two-thirds  of  the  states, 
and  a  majority  of  all  the  states  shall  be  necessary  to  a  choice.  And  if  the 
House  of  Representatives  shall  not  choose  a  President  whenever  the  right  of 
choice  shall  devolve  upon  them,  before  the  fourth  day  of  March  next  following, 
then  the  Vice-President  shall  act  as  President,  as  in  the  case  of  the  death  or 
other  constitutional  disability  of  the  President.  The  person  having  the  greatest 
number  of  votes  as  Vice-President,  shall  be  the  Vice-President,  if  such  number 
be  a  majority  of  the  whole  number  of  Electors  appointed,  and  if  no  person 
have  a  majority,  then  from  the  two  highest  numbers  on  the  list,  the  Senate 
shall  choose  the  Vice-President;  a  quorum  for  the  purpose  shall  consist  of 
two-thirds  of  the  whole  number  of  Senators,  and  a  majority  of  the  whole 

1  The  first  ten  amendments  went  into  effect  Nov.  3, 

2  In  effect  Jan.  8,  1798. 


570  APPENDIX   II 

number  shall  be  necessary  to  a  choice.  But  no  person  constitutionally  ineli 
gible  to  the  office  of  President  shall  be  eligible  to  that  of  Vice-President  of  the 
United  States.1 

ARTICLE  XIII. 

SECTION,  i 

Neither  slavery  nor  involuntary  servitude,  except  as  a  punishment  for  crime 
whereof  the  party  shall  have  been  duly  convicted,  shall  exist  within  the  United 
States,  or  any  place  subject  to  their  jurisdiction. 

SECTION.  2. 

Congress  shall  have  power  to  enforce  this  article  by  appropriate  leg 
islation.'  2 

ARTICLE  XIV. 

SECTION,  i. 

All  persons  born  or  naturalized  in  the  United  States,  and  subject  to  the 
jurisdiction  thereof,  are  citizens  of  the  United  States  and  of  the  State  wherein 
they  reside.  No  State  shall  make  or  enforce  any  law  which  shall  abridge  the 
privileges  or  immunities  of  citizens  of  the  United  States;  nor  shall  any  State 
deprive  any  person  of  life,  liberty,  or  property,  without  due  process  of  law; 
nor  deny  to  any  person  within  its  jurisdiction  the  equal  protection  of  the  laws. 

SECTION.  2. 

Representatives  shall  be  apportioned  among  the  several  States  according 
to  their  respective  numbers,  counting  the  whole  number  of  persons  in  each 
State,  excluding  Indians  not  taxed.  But  when  the  right  to  vote  at  any  election 
for  the  choice  of  electors  for  President  and  Vice-President  of  the  United  States, 
Representatives  in  Congress,  the  Executive  and  Judicial  officers  of  a  State, 
or  the  members  of  the  Legislature  thereof,  is  denied  to  any  of  the  male  in 
habitants  of  such  State,  being  twenty-one  years  of  age,  and  citizens  of  the 
United  States,  or  in  any  way  abridged,  except  for  participation  in  rebellion, 
or  other  crime,  the  basis  of  representation  therein  shall  be  reduced  in  the  pro 
portion  which  the  number  of  such  male  citizens  shall  bear  to  the  whole 
number  of  male  citizens  twenty-one  years  of  age  in  such  State. 

SECTION.  3. 

No  person  shall  be  a  Senator  or  Representative  in  Congress,  or  elector  of 
President  and  Vice-President,  or  hold  any  office,  civil  or  military,  under  the 
United  States,  or  under  any  State,  who,  having  previously  taken  an  oath,  as 
a  member  of  Congress,  or  as  an  officer  of  the  United  States,  or  as  a  member 
of  any  State  legislature,  or  as  an  executive  or  judicial  officer  of  any  State,  to 
support  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  shall  have  engaged  in  insur 
rection  or  rebellion  against  the  same,  or  given  aid  or  comfort  to  the  enemies 
thereof.  But  Congress  may  by  a  vote  of  two-thirds  of  each  House,  remove 
such  disability. 

1  In  effect  Sept.  25,  1804.  2  In  effect  December  18,  1865. 


APPENDIX   II  57! 

SECTION.  4. 

The  validity  of  the  public  debt  of  the  United  States,  authorized  by  law, 
including  debts  incurred  for  payment  of  pensions  and  bounties  for  services 
in  suppressing  insurrection  or  rebellion,  shall  not  be  questioned.  But  neither 
the  United  States  nor  any  State  shall  assume  or  pay  any  debt  or  obligation 
incurred  in  aid  of  insurrection  or  rebellion  against  the  United  States,  or  any 
claim  for  the  loss  or  emancipation  of  any  slave;  but  all  such  debts,  obligations 
and  claims  shall  be  held  illegal  and  void. 

SECTION.  5. 

The  Congress  shall  have  power  to  enforce,  by  appropriate  legislation,  the 
provisions  of  this  article.1 

ARTICLE  XV. 
SECTION,  i. 

The  right  of  citizens  of  the  United  States  to  vote  shall  not  be  denied  or 
abridged  by  the  United  States  or  by  any  State  on  account  of  race,  color,  or 
previous  condition  of  servitude. 

SECTION.  2. 

The  Congress  shall  have  power  to  enforce  this  article  by  appropriate 
legislation.2 

ARTICLE  XVI. 

SECTION,  i. 

The  Congress  shall  have  power  to  lay  and  collect  taxes  on  incomes,  from 
whatever  source  derived,  without  apportionment  among  the  several  States, 
and  without  regard  to  any  census  or  enumeration.3 

ARTICLE  XVII. 

SECTION,  i. 

The  Senate  of  the  United  States  shall  be  composed  of  two  Senators  from 
each  State,  elected  by  the  people  thereof,  for  six  years;  and  each  Senator 
shall  have  one  vote.  The  electors  in  each  State  shall  have  the  qualifications 
requisite  for  electors  of  the  most  numerous  branch  of  the  State  Legislatures. 

SECTION.  2. 

When  vacancies  happen  in  the  representation  of  any  State  in  the  Senate, 
the  executive  authority  of  such  State  shall  issue  writs  of  election  to  fill  such 
vacancies:  Provided,  That  the  Legislature  of  any  State  may  empower  the 
executive  thereof  to  make  temporary  appointment  until  the  people  fill  the 
vacancies  by  election  as  the  Legislature  may  direct. 

SECTION.  3. 

This  amendment  shall  not  be  so  construed  as  to  affect  the  election  or  term 
of  any  Senator  chosen  before  it  becomes  valid  as  part  of  the  Constitution,4 

1  In  effect  July  28,  1868.  3  In  effect  February  25,  1913. 

2  In  effect  March  30,  1870.  4  In  effect  May  31,  1913. 


572  APPENDIX  II 

ARTICLE  XVIII 
SECTION  I 

After  one  year  from  the  ratification  of  this  article  the  manufacture,  sale, 
or  transportation  of  intoxicating  liquors  within,  the  importation  thereof  into, 
or  the  exportation  thereof  from  the  United  States  and  all  territory  subject 
to  the  jurisdiction  thereof  for  beverage  purposes  is  hereby  prohibited. 

SECTION  II 

The  Congress  and  the  several  states  shall  have  concurrent  power  to  enforce 
this  article  by  appropriate  legislation. 

SECTION  3 

This  article  shall  be  inoperative  unless  it  shall  have  been  ratified  as  an  amend 
ment  to  the  Constitution  by  the  legislatures  of  the  several  states,  as  provided 
in  the  Constitution,  within  seven  years  from  the  date  of  the  submission  hereof 
to  the  states  by  the  Congress.1 

lln  effect  January  16,  1920. 


APPENDIX  III 
ADDRESS   OF   PRESIDENT  WILSON 

Delivered  at  a  Joint  Session  of  the  Two  Houses  of  Congress  April  2, 

GENTLEMEN  or  THE  CONGRESS: 

I  HAVE  called  the  Congress  into  extraordinary  session  because  there  are 
serious,  very  serious,  choices  of  policy  to  be  made,  and  made  immediately, 
which  it  was  neither  right  nor  constitutionally  permissible  that  I  should 
assume  the  responsibility  of  making. 

On  the  3d  of  February  last  I  officially  laid  before  you  the  extraordinary 
announcement  of  the  Imperial  German  Government  that  on  and  after  the 
first  day  of  February  it  was  its  purpose  to  put  aside  all  restraints  of  law  or  of 
humanity  and  use  its  submarines  to  sink  every  vessel  that  sought  to  approach 
either  the  ports  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  or  the  western  coasts  of  Europe 
or  any  of  the  ports  controlled  by  the  enemies  of  Germany  within  the  Medi 
terranean.  That  had  seemed  to  be  the  object  of  the  German  submarine  war 
fare  earlier  in  the  war,  but  since  April  of  last  year  the  Imperial  Government 
had  somewhat  restrained  the  commanders  of  its  undersea  craft  in  conformity 
with  its  promise  then  given  to  us  that  passenger  boats  should  not  be  sunk  and 
that  due  warning  would  be  given  to  all  other  vessels  which  its  submarines 
might  seek  to  destroy,  when  no  resistance  was  offered  or  escape  attempted, 
and  care  taken  that  their  crews  were  given  at  least  a  fair  chance  to  save  their 
lives  in  their  open  boats.  The  precautions  taken  were  meagre  and  haphazard 
enough,  as  was  proved  in  distressing  instance  after  instance  in  the  progress  of 
the  cruel  and  unmanly  business,  but  a  certain  degree  of  restraint  was  observed. 
The  new  policy  has  swept  every  restriction  aside.  Vessels  of  every  kind,  what 
ever  their  flag,  their  character,  their  cargo,  their  destination,  their  errand, 
have  been  ruthlessly  sent  to  the  bottom  without  warning  and  without  thought 
of  help  or  mercy  for  those  on  board,  the  vessels  of  friendly  neutrals  along  with 
those  of  belligerents.  Even  hospital  ships  and  ships  carrying  relief  to  the 
sorely  bereaved  and  stricken  people  of  Belgium,  though  the  latter  were  pro 
vided  with  safe  conduct  through  the  proscribed  areas  by  the  German  Govern 
ment  itself  and  were  distinguished  by  unmistakable  marks  of  identity,  have 
been  sunk  with  the  same  reckless  lack  of  compassion  or  of  principle. 

I  was  for  a  little  while  unable  to  believe  that  such  things  would  in  fact  be 
done  by  any  government  that  had  hitherto  subscribed  to  the  humane  practices 
of  civilized  nations.  International  law  had  its  origin  in  the  attempt  to  set 
up  some  law  which  would  be  respected  and  observed  upon  the  seas,  where  no 
nation  had  right  of  dominion  and  where  lay  the  free  highways  of  the  world. 
By  gainful  stage  after  stage  has  that  law  been  built  up,  with  meagre  enough 

573 


574  APPENDIX  III 

results,  indeed,  after  all  was  accomplished  that  could  be  accomplished,  but 
always  with  a  clear  view,  at  least,  of  what  the  heart  and  conscience  of  mankind 
demanded.  This  minimum  of  right  the  German  Government  had  swept  aside 
under  the  plea  of  retaliation  and  necessity  and  because  it  had  no  weapons  which 
it  could  use  at  sea  except  these  which  it  is  impossible  to  employ  as  it  is  employ 
ing  them  without  throwing  to  the  winds  all  scruples  of  humanity  or  of  respect 
for  the  understandings  that  were  supposed  to  underlie  the  intercourse  of  the 
world.  I  am  not  now  thinking  of  the  loss  of  property  involved,  immense  and 
serious  as  that  is,  but  only  of  the  wanton  and  wholesale  destruction  of  the  lives 
of  noncombatants,  men,  women,  and  children,  engaged  in  pursuits  which  have 
always,  even  in  the  darkest  periods  of  modern  history,  been  deemed  innocent 
and  legitimate.  Property  can  be  paid  for;  the  lives  of  peaceful  and  innocent 
people  cannot  be.  The  present  German  submarine  warfare  against  commerce 
is  a  warfare  against  mankind. 

It  is  a  war  against  all  nations.  American  ships  have  been  sunk,  American 
lives  taken,  in  ways  which  it  has  stirred  us  very  deeply  to  learn  of,  but  the  ships 
and  people  of  other  neutral  and  friendly  nations  have  been  sunk  and  over 
whelmed  in  the  waters  in  the  same  way.  There  has  been  no  discrimination. 
The  challenge  is  to  all  mankind.  Each  nation  must  decide  for  itself  how  it 
will  meet  it.  The  choice  we  make  for  ourselves  must  be  made  with  a  modera 
tion  of  counsel  and  a  temperateness  of  judgment  befitting  our  character  and 
our  motives  as  a  nation.  We  must  put  excited  feeling  away.  Our  motive  will 
not  be  revenge  or  the  victorious  assertion  of  the  physical  might  of  the  nation, 
but  only  the  vindication  of  right,  of  human  right,  of  which  we  are  only  a  single 
champion. 

When  I  addressed  the  Congress  on  the  26th  of  February  last  I  thought  that 
it  would  suffice  to  assert  our  neutral  rights  with  arms,  our  right  to  use  the  seas 
against  unlawful  interference,  our  right  to  keep  our  people  safe  against  unlawful 
violence.  But  armed  neutrality,  it  now  appears,  is  impracticable.  Because 
submarines  are  in  effect  outlaws  when  used  as  the  German  submarines  have 
been  used  against  merchant  shipping,  it  is  impossible  to  defend  ships  against 
their  attacks  as  the  law  of  nations  has  assumed  that  merchantmen  would 
defend  themselves  against  privateers  or  cruisers,  visible  craft  giving  chase 
upon  the  open  sea.  It  is  common  prudence  in  such  circumstances,  grim 
necessity  indeed,  to  endeavor  to  destroy  them  before  they  have  shown  their 
own  intention.  They  must  be  dealt  with  upon  sight,  if  dealt  with  at  all. 
The  German  Government  denies  the  right  of  neutrals  to  use  arms  at  all  within 
the  areas  of  the  sea  which  it  has  proscribed,  even  in  the  defense  of  rights  which 
no  modern  publicist  has  ever  before  questioned  their  right  to  defend.  The 
intimation  is  conveyed  that  the  armed  guards  which  we  have  placed  on  our 
merchant  ships  will  be  treated  as  beyond  the  pale  of  law  and  subject  to  be 
dealt  with  as  pirates  would  be.  Armed  neutrality  is  ineffectual  enough  at 
best ;  in  such  circumstances  and  in  the  face  of  such  pretensions  it  is  worse  than 
ineffectual:  it  is  likely  only  to  produce  what  it  was  meant  to  prevent;  it  is 
practically  certain  to  draw  us  into  the  war  without  either  the  rights  or  the 
effectiveness  of  belligerents.  There  is  one  choice  we  cannot  make,  we  are 


APPENDIX  III  575 

incapable  of  making:  we  will  not  choose  the  path  of  submission  and  suffer 
the  most  sacred  rights  of  our  nation  and  our  people  to  be  ignored  or  violated. 
The  wrongs  against  which  we  now  array  ourselves  are  no  common  wrongs; 
they  cut  to  the  very  roots  of  human  life. 

With  a  profound  sense  of  the  solemn  and  even  tragical  character  of  the  step 
I  am  taking  and  of  the  grave  responsibilities  which  it  involves,  but  in  un 
hesitating  obedience  to  what  I  deem  my  constitutional  duty,  I  advise  that  the 
Congress  declare  the  recent  course  of  the  Imperial  German  Government  to  be 
in  fact  nothing  less  than  war  against  the  Government  and  people  of  the  United 
States;  that  it  formally  accept  the  status  of  belligerent  which  has  thus  been 
thrust  upon  it;  and  that  it  take  immediate  steps  not  only  to  put  the  country 
in  a  more  thorough  state  of  defense  but  also  to  exert  all  its  power  and  employ 
all  its  resources  to  bring  the  Government  of  the  German  Empire  to  terms  and 
end  the  war. 

What  this  will  involve  is  clear.  It  will  involve  the  utmost  practicable 
cooperation  in  counsel  and  action  with  the  governments  now  at  war  with  Ger 
many,  and,  as  incident  to  that,  the  extension  to  those  governments  of  the  most 
liberal  financial  credits,  in  order  that  our  resources  may  so  far  as  possible  be 
added  to  theirs.  It  will  involve  the 'Organization  and  mobilization  of  all  the 
material  resources  of  the  country  to  supply  the  materials  of  war  and  serve  the 
incidental  needs  of  the  nation  in  the  most  abundant  and  yet  the  most  econom 
ical  and  efficient  way  possible.  It  will  involve  the  immediate  full  equipment 
of  the  navy  in  all  respects  but  particularly  in  supplying  it  with  the  best  means 
of  dealing  with  the  enemy's  submarines.  It  will  involve  the  immediate  addi 
tion  to  the  armed  forces  of  the  United  States  already  provided  for  by  law  in 
case  of  war  of  at  least  500,000  men,  who  should,  in  my  opinion,  be  chosen  upon 
the  principle  of  universal  liability  to  service,  and  also  the  authorization  of  sub 
sequent  additional  increments  of  equal  force  so  soon  as  they  may  be  needed 
and  can  be  handled  in  training.  It  will  involve  also,  of  course,  the  granting 
of  adequate  credits  to  the  Government,  sustained,  I  hope,  so  far  as  they  can 
equitably  be  sustained  by  the  present  generation,  by  well  conceived  taxation. 

I  say  sustained  so  far  as  may  be  equitable  by  taxation  because  it  seems  to 
me  that  it  would  be  most  unwise  to  base  the  credits  which  will  now  be  necessary 
entirely  on  money  borrowed.  It  is  our  duty,  I  most  respectfully  urge,  to 
protect  our  people  so  far  as  we  may  against  the  very  serious  hardships  and 
evils  which  would  be  likely  to  arise  out  of  the  inflation  which  would  be  pro 
duced  by  vast  loans. 

In  carrying  out  the  measures  by  which  these  things  are  to  be  accomplished 
we  should  keep  constantly  in  mind  the  wisdom  of  interfering  as  little  as  pos 
sible  in  our  own  preparation  and  in  the  equipment  of  our  own  military  forces 
with  the  duty  —  for  it  will  be  a  very  practical  duty  —  of  supplying  the  nations 
already  at  war  with  Germany  with  the  materials  which  they  can  obtain  only 
from  us  or  by  our  assistance.  They  are  in  the  field  and  we  should  help  them 
in  every  way  to  be  effective  there. 

I  shall  take  the  liberty  of  suggesting  through  the  several  executive  depart 
ments,  of  the  Government,  for  the  consideration  of  your  committees,  measures 


57^  APPENDIX  III 

for  the  accomplishment  of  the  several  objects  I  have  mentioned.  I  hope  that 
it  will  be  your  pleasure  to  deal  with  them  as  having  been  framed  after  very 
careful  thought  by  the  branch  of  the  Government  upon  which  the  responsi 
bility  of  conducting  the  war  and  safeguarding  the  nation  will  most  directly  fall. 

While  we  do  these  things,  these  deeply  momentous  things,  let  us  be  very 
clear,  and  make  very  clear  to  all  the  world  what  our  motives  and  our  objects 
are.  My  own  thought  has  not  been  driven  from  its  habitual  and  normal  course 
by  the  unhappy  events  of  the  last  two  months,  and  I  do  not  believe  that  the 
thought  of  the  nation  has  been  altered  or  clouded  by  them.  I  have  exactly 
the  same  things  in  mind  now  that  I  had  in  mind  when  I  addressed  the  Senate 
on  the  22d  of  January  last;  the  same  that  I  had  in  mind  when  I  addressed  the 
Congress  on  the  3d  of  February  and  on  the  26th  of  February.  Our  object 
now,  as  then,  is  to  vindicate  the  principles  of  peace  and  justice  in  the  life  of  the 
world  as  against  selfish  and  autocratic  power  and  to  set  up  among  the  really 
free  and  self-governed  peoples  of  the  world  such  a  concert  of  purpose  and  of 
action  as  will  henceforth  insure  the  observance  of  those  principles.  Neutrality 
is  no  longer  feasible  or  desirable  where  the  peace  of  the  world  is  involved  and 
the  freedom  of  its  peoples,  and  the  menace  to  that  peace  and  freedom  lies  in 
the  existence  of  autocratic  governments  backed  by  organized  force  which  is 
controlled  wholly  by  their  will,  not  by  the  will  of  their  people.  We  have  seen 
the  last  of  neutrality  in  such  circumstances.  We  are  at  the  beginning  of  an 
age  in  which  it  will  be  insisted  that  the  same  standards  of  conduct  and  of 
responsibility  for  wrong  done  shall  be  observed  among  nations  and  their 
governments  that  are  observed  among  the  individual  citizens  of  civilized  States. 

We  have  no  quarrel  with  the  German  people.  We  have  no  feeling  toward 
them  but  one  of  sympathy  and  friendship.  It  was  not  upon  their  impulse 
that  their  Government  acted  in  entering  this  war.  It  was  not  with  their  pre 
vious  knowledge  or  approval.  It  was  a  war  determined  upon  as  wars  used  to 
be  determined  upon  in  the  old,  unhappy  days  when  peoples  were  nowhere 
consulted  by  their  rulers  and  wars  were  provoked  and  waged  in  the  interest 
of  dynasties  or  of  little  groups  of  ambitious  men  who  were  accustomed  to 
use  their  fellow  men  as  pawns  and  tools.  Self -governed  nations  do  not  fill 
their  neighbor  States  with  spies  or  set  the  course  of  intrigue  to  bring  about 
some  critical  posture  of  affairs  which  will  give  them  an  opportunity  to  strike 
and  make  conquest.  Such  designs  can  be  successfully  worked  out  only  under 
cover  and  where  no  one  has  the  right  to  ask  questions.  Cunningly  contrived 
plans  of  deception  or  aggression,  carried,  it  may  be,  from  generation  to  genera 
tion,  can  be  worked  out  and  kept  from  the  light  only  within  the  privacy  of 
courts  or  behind  the  carefully  guarded  confidences  of  a  narrow  and  privileged 
class.  They  are  happily  impossible  where  public  opinion  commands  and 
insists  upon  full  information  concerning  all  the  nation's  affairs. 

A  steadfast  concert  for  peace  can  never  be  maintained  except  by  a  partner 
ship  of  democratic  nations.  No  autocratic  government  could  be  trusted  to 
keep  faith  within  it  or  observe  its  covenants.  It  must  be  a  league  of  honor, 
a  partnership  of  opinion.  Intrigue  would  eat  its  vitals  away;  the  plottings 
of  inner  circles  who  could  plan  what  they  would  and  render  account  to  no  one 


APPENDIX  III  577 

would  be  a  corruption  seated  at  its  very  heart.  Only  free  peoples  can  hold 
their  purpose  and  their  honor  steady  to  a  common  end  and  prefer  the  interests 
of  mankind  to  any  narrow  interest  of  their  own. 

Does  not  every  American  feel  that  assurance  has  been  added  to  our  hope 
for  the  future  peace  of  the  world  by  the  wonderful  and  heartening  things  that 
have  been  happening  within  the  last  few  weeks  in  Russia?  Russia  was  known 
by  those  who  knew  it  best  to  have  been  always  in  fact  democratic  at  heart, 
in  all  the  vital  habits  of  her  thought,  in  all  the  intimate  relationships  of  her 
people  that  spoke  their  natural  instinct,  their  habitual  attitude  toward  life. 
The  autocracy  that  crowned  the  summit  of  her  political  structure,  long  as  it 
had  stood  and  terrible  as  was  the  reality  of  its  power,  was  not  in  fact  Russian 
in  origin,  character,  or  purpose;  and  now  it  has  been  shaken  off  and  the  great, 
generous  Russian  people  have  been  added,  in  all  their  naive  majesty  and  might, 
to  the  forces  that  are  fighting  for  freedom  in  the  world,  for  justice,  and  for 
peace.  Here  is  a  fit  partner  for  a  League  of  Honor. 

One  of  the  things  that  has  served  to  convince  us  that  the  Prussian  autoc 
racy  was  not  and  could  never  be  our  friend  is  that  from  the  very  outset  of  the 
present  war  it  has  filled  our  unsuspecting  communities  and  even  our  offices 
of  government  with  spies  and  set  criminal  intrigues  everywhere  afoot  against 
our  national  unity  of  counsel,  our  peace  within  and  without,  our  industries 
and  our  commerce.  Indeed  it  is  now  evident  that  its  spies  were  here  even 
before  the  war  began;  and  it  is  unhappily  not  a  matter  of  conjecture,  but  a 
fact  proved  in  our  courts  of  justice,  that  the  intrigues  which  have  more  than 
once  come  perilously  near  to  disturbing  the  peace  and  dislocating  the  in 
dustries  of  the  country  have  been  carried  on  at  the  instigation,  with  the 
support,  and  even  under  the  personal  direction  of  official  agents  of  the  Im 
perial  Government  accredited  to  the  Government  of  the  United  States.  Even 
in  checking  these  things  and  trying  to  extirpate  them  we  have  sought  to  put 
the  most  generous  interpretation  possible  upon  them  because  we  knew  that 
their  source  lay,  not  in  any  hostile  feeling  or  purpose  of  the  German  people 
toward  us  (who  were,  no  doubt  as  ignorant  of  them  as  we  ourselves  were), 
but  only  in  the  selfish  designs  of  a  government  that  did  what  it  pleased  and 
told  its  people  nothing.  But  they  have  played  their  part  in  serving  to  con 
vince  us  at  last  that  that  Government  entertains  no  real  friendship  for  us, 
and  means  to  act  against  our  peace  and  security  at  its  convenience.  That  it 
means  to  stir  up  enemies  against  us  at  our  very  doors  the  intercepted  note  to 
the  German  Minister  at  Mexico  City  is  eloquent  evidence. 

We  are  accepting  this  challenge  of  hostile  purpose  because  we  know  that  in 
such  a  government,  following  such  methods,  we  can  never  have  a  friend;  and 
that  in  the  presence  of  its  organized  power,  always  lying  in  wait  to  accomplish 
we  know  not  what  purpose,  there  can  be  no  assured  security  for  the  demo 
cratic  governments  of  the  world.  We  are  now  about  to  accept  gauge  of  battle 
with  this  natural  foe  to  liberty  and  shall,  if  necessary,  spend  the  whole  force  of 
the  nation  to  check  and  nullify  its  pretensions  and  its  power.  We  are  glad, 
now  that  we  see  the  facts  with  no  veil  of  false  pretense  about  them,  to  fight 
thus  f9r  the  ultimate  peace  of  the  world  and  for  the  liberation  of  its  peoples, 


578  APPENDIX  III 

the  German  peoples  included :  for  the  rights  of  nations  great  and  small  and  the 
privilege  of  men  everywhere  to  choose  their  way  of  life  and  of  obedience. 
The  world  must  be  made  safe  for  democracy.  Its  peace  must  be  planted  upon 
the  tested  foundations  of  political  liberty.  We  have  no  selfish  ends  to  serve. 
We  desire  no  conquest,  no  dominion.  We  seek  no  indemnities  for  ourselves, 
no  material  compensation  for  the  sacrifices  we  shall  freely  make.  We  are  but 
one  of  the  champions  of  the  rights  of  mankind.  We  shall  be  satisfied  when 
those  rights  have  been  made  as  secure  as  the  faith  and  the  freedom  of  nations 
can  make  them. 

Just  because  we  fight  without  rancor  and  without  selfish  object,  seeking 
nothing  for  ourselves  but  what  we  shall  wish  to  share  with  all  free  peoples,  we 
shall,  I  feel  confident,  conduct  our  operations  as  belligerents  without  passion 
and  ourselves  observe  with  proud  punctilio  the  principles  of  right  and  of  fair 
play  we  profess  to  be  fighting  for. 

I  have  said  nothing  of  the  governments  allied  with  the  Imperial  Govern 
ment  of  Germany  because  they  have  not  made  war  upon  us  or  challenged  us 
to  defend  our  right  and  our  honor.  The  Austro-Hungarian  Government  has, 
indeed,  avowed  its  unqualified  indorsement  and  acceptance  of  the  reckless  and 
lawless  submarine  warfare  adopted  now  without  disguise  by  the  Imperial 
German  Government,  and  it  has  therefore  not  been  possible  for  this  Govern 
ment  to  receive  Count  Tarnowski,  the  Ambassador  recently  accredited  to 
this  Government  by  the  Imperial  and  Royal  Government  of  Austria-Hungary; 
but  that  Government  has  not  actually  engaged  in  warfare  against  citizens  of  the 
United  States  on  the  seas,  and  I  take  the  liberty,  for  the  present  at  least,  of 
postponing  a  discussion  of  our  relations  with  the  authorities  at  Vienna.  We 
enter  this  war  only  where  we  are  clearly  forced  into  it  because  there  are  no  other 
means  of  defending  our  right. 

It  will  be  all  the  easier  for  us  to  conduct  ourselves  as  belligerents  in  a  high 
spirit  of  right  and  fairness  because  we  act  without  animus,  not  in  enmity  toward 
a  people  or  with  the  desire  to  bring  any  injury  or  disadvantage  upon  them, 
but  only  in  armed  opposition  to  an  irresponsible  government  which  has  thrown 
aside  all  considerations  of  humanity  and  of  right  and  is  running  amuck. 

We  are,  let  me  say  again,  the  sincere  friends  of  the  German  people,  and  shall 
desire  nothing  so  much  as  the  early  re-establishment  of  intimate  relations  of 
mutual  advantage  between  us  —  however  hard  it  may  be  for  them  for  the  time 
being  to  believe  that  this  is  spoken  from  our  hearts.  We  have  borne  with 
their  present  Government  through  all  these  bitter  months  because  of  that 
friendship  —  exercising  a  patience  and  forbearance  which  would  otherwise 
have  been  impossible.  We  shall  happily  still  have  an  opportunity  to  prove 
that  friendship  in  our  daily  attitude  and  actions  toward  the  millions  of  men 
and  women  of  German  birth  and  native  sympathy  who  live  amongst  us  and 
share  our  life,  and  we  shall  be  proud  to  prove  it  toward  all  who  are  in  fact  loyal 
to  their  neighbors  and  to  the  Government  in  the  hour  of  test.  They  are, 
most  of  them  as  true  and  loyal  Americans  as  if  they  had  never  known  any  other 
fealty  or  allegiance.  They  will  be  prompt  to  stand  with  us  in  rebuking  and 
restraining  the  few  who  may  be  of  a  different  mind  and  purpose.  If  there 


APPENDIX  III  579 

should  be  disloyalty,  it  will  be  dealt  with  with  a  firm  hand  of  stern  repression; 
but,  if  it  lifts  its  head  at  all,  it  will  lift  it  only  here  and  there  and  without  coun 
tenance  except  from  a  lawless  and  malignant  few. 

It  is  a  distressing  and  oppressive  duty,  Gentlemen  of  the  Congress,  which 
I  have  performed  in  thus  addressing  you.  There  are,  it  may  be,  many  months 
of  fiery  trial  and  sacrifice  ahead  of  us.  It  is  a  fearful  thing  to  lead  this  great 
peaceful  people  into  war,  into  the  most  terrible  and  disastrous  of  all  wars, 
civilization  itself  seeming  to  be  in  the  balance.  But  the  right  is  more  precious 
than  peace,  and  we  shall  fight  for  the  things  which  we  have  always  carried 
nearest  our  hearts  —  for  democracy,  for  the  right  of  those  who  submit  to  au 
thority  to  have  a  voice  in  their  own  governments,  for  the  rights  and  liberties 
of  small  nations,  for  a  universal  dominion  of  right  by  such  a  concert  of  free 
peoples  as  shall  bring  peace  and  safety  to  all  nations  and  make  the  world 
itself  at.  last  free.  To  such  a  task  we  can  dedicate  our  lives  and  our  fortunes, 
everything  that  we  are  and  everything  that  we  have,  with  the  pride  of  those 
who  know  that  the  day  has  come  when  America  is  privileged  to  spend  her 
blood  and  her  might  for  the  principles  that  gave  her  birth  and  happiness  and 
the  peace  which  she  has  treasured.  God  helping  her,  she  can  do  no  other. 


APPENDIX  IV 

BOOK  LISTS 

A.  A  selected  list  of  the  books  referred  to  in  this  history.  These  titles  are 
quoted  very  briefly  in  the  references  at  the  ends  of  chapters;  those  not  in 
this  list  are  there  quoted  more  fully. 

ADAMS,  CHARLES  FRANCIS,  Charles  Francis  Adams;  Lee  at  Appomattox  and 
Other  Papers;  Panama  Canal  Zone;  Wednesday,  August  ip,  1812,  6.30 
P.M.  —  The  Birth  of  a  World  Power. 

ADAMS,  CHARLES  FRANCIS,  AND  ADAMS,  HENRY,  Chapters  of  Erie  and  Other 
Essays. 

ADAMS,  HENRY,  History  of  the  United  States. 

ANDREWS,  CHARLES  MCLEAN,  Colonial  Self -Government;  Colonial  Period. 

AVERY,  ELROY  MCKENDREE,  History  of  the  United  States  and  Its  People. 

BASSETT,  JOHN  SPENCER,  Federalist  System;  Life  of  Andrew  Jackson. 

BEARD,  CHARLES  AUSTIN,  American  Government  and  Politics;  Contemporary 
American  History. 

BOURNE,  EDWARD  GAYLORD,  Spain  in  America;  Essays  in  Historical  Criti 
cism. 

BRUCE,  H.  ADDINGTON,  Daniel  Boone  and  the  Wilderness  Road;  Romance  oj 
American  Expansion. 

CHANNING,  EDWARD,  History  of  the  United  States;  Jeffersonian  System;  Town 
and  County  Government  in  the  English  Colonies  of  North  America. 

CHANNING,  EDWARD,  AND  LANSING,  M.  F.,  Story  of  the  Great  Lakes. 

CURTIS,  EDWARD  S.,  North  American  Indian. 

DEWEY,  DAVID  RICH,  National  Problems. 

DUNBAR,  SEYMOUR,  History  of  Travel  in  America. 

FARRAND,  MAX,  Framing  of  the  Constitution;  Records  of  the  Federal  Convention 

FARRAND,  MAX,  ED.,  Journey  to  Ohio  in  1810. 

FISH,  CARL  RUSSELL,  Civil  Service  and  the  Patronage. 

FISHER,  SYDNEY  GEORGE,  Struggle  for  American  Independence;  True  Ben 
jamin  Franklin;  Men,  Women,  and  Manners  in  Colonial  Times;  Making 
of  Pennsylvania. 

FISKE,  JOHN,  American  Revolution;  Beginnings  of  New  England;  Critical 
Period  of  American  History;  Discovery  of  America;  Dutch  and  Quaker 
Colonies  in  America;  Mississippi  Valley  in  the  Civil  War;  New  France 
and  New  England;  Old  Virginia  and  Her  Neighbors. 

FITE,  EMERSON  DAVID,  Presidential  Campaign  of  1860;  Social  and  Industrial 
Conditions  in  the  North  During  the  Civil  War. 

FOSTER,  JOHN  W.,  American  Diplomacy  in  the  Orient;  Century  of  American 
Diplomacy. 

580 


APPENDIX  IV  581 

GRINNELL,  GEORGE  BIRD,  Trails  of  the  Pathfinders. 

HART,  ALBERT  BUSHNELL,  Abolition  and  Slavery;    Salmon  Portland  Chas±. 

HILL,  FREDERICK  TREVOR,  Decisive  Battles  of  the  Law. 

HULBERT,  ARCHER  B.,  Historic  Highways  of  America. 

JOHNSON,  ALLEN,  Stephen  Arnold  Douglas. 

LATANE,  JOHN  H.,  United  States  as  a  World  Power. 

LECKY,  WILLIAM  EDWARD  HARTPOLE,  American  Revolution. 

LODGE,  HENRY  CABOT,  Daniel  Webster;  George  Washington. 

MACDONALD,  WILLIAM,  Select  Documents,  1776-1861. 

McMASTER,  JOHN  BACH,  History  of  the  People  of  the  United  States. 

MORSE,  JOHN  T.,  Abraham  Lincoln;   Benjamin  Franklin;    Thomas  Jefferson; 

John  Quincy  Adams. 

NICOLAY,  JOHN  C.,  AND  HAY,  JOHN,  Abraham  Lincoln. 
OGG,  FREDERICK  AUSTIN,  Opening  of  the  Mississippi. 
OSGOOD,  HERBERT  L.,  American  Colonies  in  the  Seventeenth  Century. 
PARKMAN,   FRANCIS,   Conspiracy  of   Pontiac;    Frontenac  and  France;    Half 

Century  of  Conflict;  Jesuits;  Montcalm  and  Wolfe;  Old  Regime  in  Canada; 

Oregon  Trail;  Pioneers -of  France  in  the  New  World. 
PAXSON,  FREDERICK  LOGAN,  Civil  War;  Independence  of  the  South  American 

Republics;  Last  American  Frontier. 

PRESCOTT,  WILLIAM  H.,  Conquest  of  Mexico;  Conquest  of  Peru. 
RHODES,  JAMES  FORD,  History  of  the  United  States. 
ROOSEVELT,  THEODORE,  New  Nationalism;    Thomas  Hart  Benton;    Winning 

of  the  West. 

ROYCE,  JOSIAH,  California. 
SCHURZ,  CARL,  Henry  Clay. 

SPARKS,  EDWIN  EARLE,  Expansion  of  the  American  People. 
SPARKS,  EDWIN  EARLE,  ED.,  English  Settlement  in  the  Illinois. 
SUMNER,  WILLIAM  GRAHAM,  Andrew  Jackson. 
THWAITES,  REUBEN  GOLD,  Daniel  Boone;   France  in  America;  Father  Mar- 

quet'te;  How  George  Rogers  Clark  Won  the  Northwest. 
THWAITES,  REUBEN  GOLD,  ED.,  Journals  of  Lewis  and  Clark. 
TREVELYAN,  SIR  GEORGE  OTTO,  American  Revolution. 
TURNER,  FREDERICK  JACKSON,  New  West;  Western  Slate  Making. 
TYLER,  MOSES  COIT,  Literary  History  of  the  American  Revolution. 
VAN  TYNE,  CLAUDE  HALSTEAD,  American  Revolution;  Loyalists  in  the  American 

Revolution. 

VILLARD,  OSWALD  GARRISON,  John  Brown. 
WINSOR,  JUSTIN,  Westward  Movement. 
WINSOR,  JUSTIN,  ED.,  Narrative  and  Critical  History  of  America. 

B.  Numerous  references  have  been  made  to  the  following  collections  of  sources. 
The  titles  are  quoted  very  briefly  in  the  references  at  the  ends  of  chapters. 

American  History  Leaflets,  Edited  by  Albert  Bushnell  Hart  and  Edward 
Channing. 


582  APPENDIX  IV 

American  History  Told  by  Contemporaries,  Edited  by  Albert  Bushnell  Hart. 

Great  Epochs  in  American  History,  Edited  by  Francis  W.  Halsey. 

Jesuit  Relations,  Edited  by  Reuben  Gold  Thwaites. 

Old  South  Leaflets. 

Original  Narratives  of  Early  American  History. 

Select  Orations  Illustrating  American  Political   History,   Edited   by  Samuel 

Bannister  Harding. 

Source  Book  of  American  History,  Edited  by  Albert  Bushnell  HarL 
Trail  Maker  Series. 


INDEX 


"A.  B.  C."  powers,  strength,  494; 
mediation,  497-498 

Abolition,  purpose,  288-289 

Abolition,  mail  matter  and  right  of 
petition,  290-291 

Acadians,   deported,   93 

Adams,  Charles  Francis,  minister  to 
Great  Britain,  375;  Liberal  Republican, 
418 

Adams,  John,  on  education,  1 1 1 ;  on  local 
government,  114;  lawyer,  124;  Second 
Continental  Congress,  127;  on  loyalists, 
133-134;  Declaration  of  Independence, 
139;  peace,  161;  minister,  169;  first 
Vice  President,  179;  aristocrat,  189; 
second  President,  201;  in  private  life, 

247 

Adams,  John  Quincy,  Secretary  of  State, 
246;  elected  President,  1824,  251; 
supports  internal  improvements  by 
Congress,  261;  his  measures,  265; 
defeated,  266;  peace  commissioner, 
246;  abolition  petitions,  290;  on 
emancipation,  363 

Adams,  Samuel,  First  Continental  Con 
gress,  127;  at  Concord  and  Lexington, 
128;  on  the  Constitution,  176 

Agriculture,  in  the  colonies.  101-104; 
on  the  frontier,  037-244;  machinery, 
284,  405;  statistics,  337 

Aguinaldo,  Emilio,  476-477 

Alabama,  depredations,  371,  374;  award, 

423 

Alaska,  purchased,  422;  gold  discoveries, 
468;  government  railroad,  492;  boun 
dary  arbitration,  486;  southern  line, 
250;  territory,  523 

Albany  Congress,  91 

Alien  Act,  202 

Amendments  of  the  Constitution,  how 
made,  176;  ten,  188;  eleventh,  189; 
twelfth,  205;  thirteenth,  381;  four 
teenth,  413,  414;  fifteenth,  414;  six 
teenth,  £24;  seventeenth,  524 


America,  native,  inhabitants,  26-26; 
plants,  fruits  and  animals,  24-25; 
climate,  26;  rivers  and  mountains,  26- 
27;  the  interior,  27;  natural  resources, 
27-28 

American  Federation  of  Labor,  438 

Anarchists,  437 

Anarchy,  symptoms  of,  170 

Andre,  John,  spy,  156 

Andros,  Edmund,  head  of  Dominion  of 
New  England,  77;  fate,  80 

Annapolis,  Convention,  173;  Naval 
Academy,  308;  Civil  War,  354 

Antietam,  battle,  362 

Anti-Federalist  party,  191 

Anti-lottery  law,  447 

Appalachian  Forest  Reserve  Act,  521 

Appomattox  Court  House,  379 

Arbitration,  industrial,  438;  at  The 
Hague,  485-486;  Alaska  boundary, 
486;  Taft  treaties,  486;  General 
Grant,  488;  for  railroad  employees, 

5J7 

Area,  America  and  Europe  compared,  28 
Aristocracy,  in  early  Massachusetts,  50; 

colonies  in  general,   189;    Federalists, 

189 

Aristotle,  i 
Arnold,    Benedict,    after    Concord    and 

Lexington,  130;   in  Canada,  131;   Fort 

Stanwix,  146;   Saratoga,  147;   treason, 

155-156;  death,  156 
Arthur,     Chester     A.,     removed,     429; 

President,  432 

Articles     of      Confederation,      166-167; 
Association,  127 
Assumption  of  state  debts,  186 
Atlanta,  taken,  377 
Atlantic  cable,  398 
Australian  ballot,  443 
Ayllon,  Lucas  Vasquez  de,  14 

Bacon,  Roger,  2 
Bacon's  Rebellion,  70 


583 


584 


INDEX 


Baffin,  William,  17 

Bahama  Islands,  59,  74 

Balboa,  Vasco  Nunez  de,  12 

Ballinger,  Richard  A.,  522 

Baltimore,  attacked,  226-227;   canal  and 

railroad,  264;    bloodshed,  353;    1910, 

507;  fire,  503 

Banks,  Nathaniel  P.,  361 
Banks,  First  Bank  of  the  United  States, 

187;     Second    Bank    of    the    United 

States,  230-231;    opposition,  257-258; 

273-274;     presidential    contest,    1832, 

273-274;   National  Banking  Act,  1863, 

388;  1914,  519-520 
Barbados,  59 

Bates,  Edwin,  cabinet,  351 
Bayonne  Decree,  221 
Beauregard,  Pierre  G.  T.,  355 
Beecher,  Henry  Ward,  365 
Behaim,  Martin,  2 
Bell,  Alexander  Graham,  402 
Belligerency,  Confederacy,  357 
Benjamin,  Judah  P.,  346 
Bennington,  battle,  147 
Benton,  Thomas  H.,  247 
Bering,  Vitus,  20 
Bering  Sea  Fisheries,  458 
Bill  of  Rights,  79 
Birney,  James  G.,  295 
Bismarck,   Prince    Otto    von,    view    of 

Monroe  Doctrine,  494 
Black  Warrior,  335 
Elaine,  James  G.,  campaign   1876,  419; 

seeks  nomination,  430;  nominated,  434; 

Secretary  of  State,  434;    ill-luck,  435; 

defeat,  435;  comparison  with  Clay,  435; 

reciprocity  in    McKinley  Tariff    Act, 

447;    Pan- American  Congress,  455 
Blair,  Francis  P.,  356 
Blair,  Montgomery,  cabinet,  351 
Bland-Allison  Act,  429 
Blockade,  196,  214,  356-357,  533 
Blockade  running,  372-373 
Bon  Homme  Richard,  155 
Bond  issues,  463 
Bonus  Bill,  235 
Boone,  Daniel,  135 
Booth,  John  Wilkes,  380 
Boston,   Colonial,   109;    Massacre,   123- 

124;    Tea  Party,  125;    Port  Bill,  126; 

siege  of,  131;   fire,  503;    igio,  507 


Boxer  Rebellion,  498 
Braddock's  defeat,  92 
Bradford,  William,  46 
Bragg,  Braxton,  in  Kentucky,  359; 

forced  from  Chattanooga,  368 
Breckinridge,  John  C.,  candidate,  343 
Brewster,  William,  46 
British  and  French  Wars,  early  attacks, 

88;     three    minor    wars,    88;     Seven 

Years'  War,  90-96 
Brown,    John,    Kansas,    329;     Harper's 

Ferry,  340 
Bryan,  William  J.,  nominated,  465-466, 

470,  477;   convention  orator,  465,  481 
Buchanan,  James,  candidate,  330;    Dred 

Scott  Decision,  331;    Lecompton  Con 
stitution,  333;   secession,  347 
Buffalo  herds,  408-410 
Buffalo,  Pan-American  Exposition,  478; 

1810,  238;   ip/o,  507 
Bull  Run,  First  battle,  354-355;    Second 

battle,  362 

Bunker  Hill,  129-130 
Burgoyne,  John,  145 
Burke,  Edmund,  137 
Burnside,  Ambrose  E.,  369 
Burr,  Aaron,  conspiracy,  213 
Butler,    Benjamin    F.,    on    contraband, 

363;  nominated,  434 

Cabinet    meeting,     under    Washington, 

183 

Cabot,  John,  9 

Cabral,  Pedro  Alvarez  de,  8 

Cabrillo,  Juan  R.,  14 

Calhoun,  John  C.,  in  Congress,  220; 
favors  loose  construction,  235;  Secre 
tary  of  War,  246;  Presidential  candi 
date,  1824,  251;  opponent  of  tariff, 
259-260;  Vice  President,  266;  Secre 
tary  of  State,  298;  Compromise  of 
1850,  320 

California,  taken,  306;  anti-slavery,  318; 
mines,  338;  and  Japan,  500 

Calvert,   Cecilius,   57 

Camden,  battle,  157-158 

Cameron,  Simon,  cabinet,  351 

Canada,  Invasion  of,  131 

Cannon,  Joseph  G.,  524-525 

Cantino,  map,  10-11 

Capital  and  labor,  Jackson's  time,  282; 


INDEX 


585 


after  1865,  393-400;    since  1900,  5IO~ 

Carnegie,  Andrew,  485,  505 

Carolina,  North  and  South,  settlement, 
72-73,  unwise  constitution,  73 

Caroline,  294 

Cartier,  Jacques,  explorer,  14;  welcome 
by  Indians,  22 

Carver,  John,  46 

Cass,  Lewis,  318 

Cattle  ranches,  406-407 

Cedar  Mountain,  battle,  362 

Centennial  Exposition,  402 

Champlain,  Samuel  de,  explorations,  17; 
Indian  alliance,  18-10;  explores  Great 
Lakes,  18;  Colonial  Governor,  84; 
Panama  Canal,  310 

Chancellorsville,  battle,  367 

Channing,  William  E.,  on  Texas,  299 

Charles  I,  King  of  England,  46-48;   67 

Charles  II,  King  of  England,  69 

Charleston,  South  Carolina,  siege  of,  132; 
taken,  157;  Fort  Sumter,  351-352; 
earthquake,  503 

Chastellux,  Marquis  de,  on  making  a 
settlement,  102-104 

Chattanooga,  Bragg  retreats  to,  359 

Chase,  Salmon  P.,  cabinet,  351;  seeks 
nomination,  415-416;  Liberal  Repub 
lican,  418 

Cherry  Valley,  Massacre,  152 

Chicago,  1810,  238;  growth,  337-338; 
fire,  502;  World's  Fair,  461;  1910,  507 

Chickamauga,  battle,  368 

Chile,  456-457 

China,  beginnings  of  commercial  rela 
tions,  199-200;  closer  trade  relations, 
313-314;  Open  Door,  498;  dollar 
diplomacy,  499-500;  Republic,  500; 
immigration  from,  restricted,  433-434 

Chippewa,  battle,  226 

Cincinnati,  1810,  238;    1910,  507 

Cities,  of  West,  growth,  507;  in  the  East, 

507 

City  Manager  Plan,  528 
Civil   Service,   under  Jackson,    268-269; 

reorganized  1861,  351;    reform,  429- 

430;  quarrels  under  Garfield,  431-432; 

new    law,    432-433;     general    survey 

since  President  Arthur,  523 
Civil.  War,  350-391 


Clark,  George  Rogers,  152-153 

Clay,  Henry,  early  life,   220;    Speaker, 

222;  on  causes  of  war,  223;  candidate, 

1824,  251;  1832,  273-274;  1844,  301^ 

302;     Compromise  1850,  319;    death, 

324 

Clayton  Anti-Trust  Law,  515 

Clay ton-B ul wer  Treaty,  311-312 

Clermont,  236 

Cleveld'.id,  1810,  238;    1910,  507 

Cleveland,  Grover,  elected,  1884,  434; 
career,  435-436;  defeated,  1888,  442; 
elected,  1892,  453;  unpopularity,  464; 
fails  of  renomination,  465 

Clinton,  DeWitt,  225 

Clinton,  Sir  Henry,  at  Charleston,  South 
Carolina,  132;  retreat,  151 

Coal,  anthracite,  282 

Cold  Harbor,  battle,  376 

Colombia,  treaty,  1846,  310;  and  Panama 
canal,  490,  492 

Colonies,  government,  58,  113-115 

Colonization,  English,  resume,  82 

Colonization,  French,  early  failures,  83; 
in  Canada,  84-85;  in  West  Indies,  86; 
on  the  Mississippi,  86 

Colonization,  of  negroes,  364 

Colorado,  mines,  340 

Columbia  River,  discovery,  199-200 

Columbus,  Christopher,  Greek  source  of 
his  belief  in  the  rotundity  of  the  earth, 
i ;  influenced  by  Toscanelli,  2 ;  and  the 
Northmen,  4;  by  Marco  Polo,  4;  by 
Portuguese,  5;  type  of  Renaissance,  5; 
preparation  for  voyages,  5;  first  voy 
age  and  welcome  home,  6;  other 
voyages,  6-8;  later  unpopularity  and 
death,  8;  welcome  by  Indians,  22 

Commission  form  of  city  government, 
527-528 

Committees  of  Correspondence,  124-125 

"Common  Sense,"  138 

Compromises,  constitutional  convention, 
174-175;  1820,  255;  1832,  273;  1850, 
"Omnibus  Bill,"  320-322;  proposed, 
1860-1861,  348 

Comstock  Lode,  340 

Concord  and  Lexington,  battle,  128 

Confederate  States  of  America,  346 

Congress,  360 

Conkling,  Roscoe,  430 


586 


INDEX 


Connecticut,  settlement,  51;  early  gov 
ernment,  52 

Conservation,  521-523;  forests,  521; 
mineral  lands,  521;  arid  lands,  521- 
522;  water  power,  523 

Constitution  and  Gucrriere,  224 

Constitution,  Confederate  States  of 
America,  347 

Constitution,  United  States  of  America, 
appendix  III;  strict  versus  loose  con 
struction,  187,  21 1 ;  Convention,  1787, 
172-176 

Constitutional  Union  party,  344 

Continentals,  133 

Continuous  voyage,  214,  533 

Contraband,    196,   372-373 

Con  way's  Cabal,  150 

Cook,  James,  20 

Cooper,  Peter,  420 

Copperheads,  370 

Cornwallis,  Lord,  at  Charleston,  South 
Carolina,  132;  at  Yorktown,  159 

Coronado,  Francisco  de,  15-16 

Corporations,  characteristics,  398; 
growth,  510-511 

Corruption,  400 

Cortes,  Hernando,  conquers  Mexico,  14; 
welcome  by  Indians,  22 

Cotton  gin,  233-234 

Cotton  growing,  and  cotton  gin,  237 

Cowpens,  battle,  158 

Coxey's  Army,  462 

Crawford,  William  H.,  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury,  246;  Presidential  candidate, 
1824,  251 

Crevecoeur,  "What  is  an  American/' 
100 

Crittenden,  John  J.,  Compromise,  348 

Cromwell,  Oliver,  67 

Cuba,  efforts  to  acquire,  312-313 

Cuba,  filibustering  expeditions,  335; 
revolt,  1868,  424;  revolt  1896,  470; 
belligerency  and  neutrality,  470-471; 
intervention,  471-472;  sanitary  prob 
lems,  481;  new  republic,  482 

Cumberland,  360 

Cumberland  Gap,  134 

Cumberland  Road,  235 

Cunard  line,  282 

Custer,  George  A.,  404 

Cylinder  printing  press,  282 


Dale,  Sir  Thomas,  39 

Danbury  Hatters,  514-515 

Danish  America,  65;  535 

Daguerreotype,  282 

Dartmouth  College  Case,  258 

Davenport,  John,  52 

Davis,  Jefferson,  President,  346;  opposes 
compromise,  349;  elected  unanimously, 
376;  career,  384 

Davis,  John,  16 

Debs,  Eugene  V.,  463,  478,  481 

Debt,  national,  185;  Jackson,  278;  Civil 
War,  381;  Cleveland,  440-441 

Declaration  of  Independence,  135-136, 
138-141;  appendix  I 

Declaration  of  the  Rights  of  Man, 
France,  194 

Declaration  of  War,  against  Great 
Britain,  223 

Delaware,  settled,  76 

Delaware,  Lord,  39 

Demarcation  line,  9 

Democracy,  colonial,  70,  73;  after  1789, 
191;  under  Jefferson,  207-208;  under 
Jackson,  268-269 

Democratic  party,  291 

Democratic-Republican  party,  191; 
theory  and  practice,  208;  end,  230,  246 

Denver,  IQIO,  507 

Deserters,  150 

Detroit,  1810,  238;  surrendered,  224; 
recovered,  226;  1910,  507 

Dewey,  George,  New  Orleans,  359;  at 
Manila  Bay,  472-474 

Diaz,  Bartholomew,  5 

Dickinson,  John,  ''  Farmers'  Letters," 
123;  First  Continental  Congress,  127; 
"Olive  Branch"  Petition,  136;  Articles 
of  Confederation,  136;  constitutional 
convention,  174 

Diedrich,  Admiral  von,  at  Manila  Bay,  474 

Dix,  Dorothea  L.,  286 

Dix,  John  A.,  347 

Dee,  John,  map,  17 

Dollar  diplomacy,  499 

Dominion  of  New  England,  77;  over 
throw,  80 

Dorr,  Thomas  W.,  285 

Douglas,  Stephen  A.,  squatter  sover 
eignty,  325-326;  early  career,  327- 
328;  campaign  1856,  330;  Lecompton 


INDEX 


5*7 


Constitution,  333;  "Freeport  Doc 
trine,"  334;  candidate,  343;  supports 
Lincoln,  353 

Dow,  Neal,  431;  prohibition  law,  286 

Draft  riots,  369 

Drago  Doctrine,  494-495 

Drake,  Sir  Francis,  attacks  on  Spain,  34; 
circumnavigation  of  the  globe,  34-35; 
welcome  by  Indians,  22 

Dred  Scott  Decision,  330-332,  364 

Dunmore,  Lord,  131 

Dutch,  in  Holland,  61;  in  Valley  of 
Hudson  River,  61;  poor  colonizers,  62; 
tolerant  in  religion,  64;  in  the  West 
Indies,  64;  conquer  New  Sweden,  65; 
conquest  of  New  Netherland  by 
England,  71-72 

Early,  Jubal  A.,  Shenandoah  Valley,  378 

Eaton,  Theophilus,  52 

Economic  changes,  after  Civil  War,  393 

Edison,  Thomas  A.,  402 

Education,  in  Massachusetts,  55;  in  vari 
ous  colonies,  111-112;  in  early  Vir 
ginia,  70-71;  in  Jackson's  time,  286- 
287;  in  Civil  War,  389;  twentieth 
century,  500 

Edward  VI,  King  of  England,  42 

El  Caney,  battle,  474 

Elizabeth,  Queen  of  England,  43 

Electoral  Commission,  1876,  420-421 

Electoral  Law,  443 

Ellsworth,  Oliver,  174 

Emancipation,  in  District  of  Columbia, 
364;  compensated,  364;  proclamation, 

363-367 

Embargo  Act,  217-218 
Equal  Rights  party,  434 
"Era  of  good  feeling,"  247 
Erie  Canal,  262-263 
Estaing,  Count  d',  151 
Ether,  282 

Exposition  and  Protest,  259-260 
European  WTar,  53°~553 
Excise  tax,  185 
Expatriation,  216 


Factory       System,       origin, 

changed  conditions,  399 
Farmers'  Alliance,  452 
"Farmers'  Letters,"  123 


281-282; 


Farragut,  David  G.,  New  Orleans,  359: 

at  Mobile  Bay,  378 
Federal    government,    nature,    176-177; 

weak,  457 
"Federalist,"  176 
Federalist  party,  191,  205,  230 
Filibustering  expeditions,  335,  336 
Financial  panic,  1837,   292;    1857,  339; 

1860-1861,   386-387;     1873,   401-402; 

i8g3,  4595   1907,  502 
First  Continental  Congress,  127 
Fish,  Hamilton,  Treaty  of  Washington, 

423;    South  American  mediation,  424; 

Cuban  insurrection,  424 
Fishing,  in  the  colonial  period,  104-105 
Fitch,  John,  236 
Fletcher  v.  Peck,  259 
Florida,    East    and    West,    loyal,    133; 

trouble  with  Spain,  247;  purchase,  248 
Florida,  374 
Foote,  Andrew  H.,  358 
Force  Acts,  418 
Forcible  collection  of  international  debts, 

495 

Foreign  debts,  293 

Foreign  population,  503 

Fort  Donelson,  358 

Fort  Duquesne,  93 

Fort  Henry,  358 

Fort  McHenry,  227 

Fort  Pillow,  359 

Fort  Sumter,  351-352 

Fort  Ticonderoga  and  Crown  Point,  94, 
130 

France,  alliance  with,  148;  French  lands 
held,  154;  alliance  disregarded,  194- 
195;  troubles  with,  201-202 

Franklin,  Benjamin,  in  Albany  Congress, 
91;  on  immigration,  98;  on  causes  ot 
Seven  Years'  War,  106;  Second  Con 
tinental  Congress,  136;  new  plan  of 
union,  136;  agent  in  London,  137; 
Declaration  of  Independence,  139; 
peace,  161;  Constitutional  convention, 

173 

Fredericksburg,  battle,  362 
"Freeport  Doctrine,"  334 
Free  Soil  party,  318 
Fremont,  John   C.,  candidate,  330;  on 

emancipation,  363 
Friction  matches,  282 


588 


INDEX 


Frobisher,  Martin,  16 

Frontier,  meaning  of  the  word,  29; 
America  as  a  European  frontier, 
29-30;  reasons  for  coming  to  the 
American  frontier,  30;  nature,  98-115, 
237-244,  403-410;  disappearance,  451 

Fugitive  Slave  Law,  322-323 

Fulton,  Robert,  236 

Gadsden  Purchase,  307 

Gage,  Thomas,  Governor  of  Massa 
chusetts,  128;  at  Bunker  Hill,  129- 
130;  criticism  of,  131 

Gallatin,  Albert,  Secretary  of  the  Treas 
ury,  207;  peace  commissioner,  246; 
in  private  life,  247 

Galveston,  Texas,  tidal  wave,  503; 
Galveston  plan,  527-528 

Gama,  Vasco  da,  5 

Garfield,  James  A.,  elected,  431;  career, 
431;  assassinated,  432 

Garrison,  William  Lloyd,  288,  290;    365 

Gas,  artificial,  280 

Gates,  Horatio,  Saratoga,  147;  in  the 
South,  157 

Genet,  Edmond  Charles,  194-195 

George  III,  arbitrary  government,  122; 
proclamation  of  1763,  134;  discredited, 
161 

Georgia,  founded,  81-82;  and  the 
Indians,  256-257,  275 

Germany  and  United  States,  530-552 

Gerry,  Elbridge,  constitutional  conven 
tion,  174,  176 

Gettysburg,  battle,  368 

Gibbons  v.  Ogden,  258-259 

Gibraltar,  160 

Gilbert,  Sir  Humphrey,  35 

Gold,  California,  309;  other  discoveries, 
468 

Gold  Democratic  party,  460 

Gold  reserve,  460 

Gold  Standard  Act,  469 

Gomez,  Estevan,  14 

Gompers,  Samuel,  438 

Gosnold,  Bartholomew,  37 

Grangers,  origin,  406;  growth,  426 

Granger  Cases,  427 

Grant,  Ulysses  S.,  Mexican  War,  308; 
Fort  Donelson,  358;  Shiloh  and  Cor 
inth,  358;  Lookout  Mountain  and 


Missionary  Ridge,  369;  before  Rich 
mond,  376;  victory,  379;  career  and 
estimate,  383;  elected  President,  416; 
re-elected,  418;  third  term,  430-431;  on 
arbitration,  488 

Grasse,  Comte  de,  fleet,  159 

Gray,  Robert,  20 

Great  Britain,  relations  with,  357,  372- 
375 

Greeley,  Horace,  editor,  287;  radical, 
365;  nominated,  418 

Greenback  party,  origin,  420;  growth, 
427 

Greenbacks,  388-389,  428 

Greene,  Nathaniel,  158 

Habeas  corpus,  369 

The  Hague,  first  peace  conference,  1899, 
484-485;  second,  487 

Hakluyt,  Richard,  33 

Hale,  John  P.,  325 

Hale,  Nathan,  156 

Hamilton,  Alexander,  Constitutional  Con 
vention,  174;  "Federalist,"  176;  Secre 
tary  of  the  Treasury,  183;  on  the 
national  bank,  187;  Alien  and  Sedition 
Laws,  202;  killed,  213 

Hancock,  John,  at  Concord  and  Lexing 
ton,  128;  on  the  Constitution,  176 

Hancock,  Winfield  Scott,  Gettysburg, 
368;  nominated,  431 

Harriman,  Edward  H.,  511 

Harrison,  Benjamin,  elected,  441-442; 
re  nominated,  452 

Harrison,  William  Henry,  Tippecanoe, 
222;  in  Canada,  226;  Presidential 
contest,  1836,  291;  President,  294-295 

Harrison's  Landing,  361 

Hartford  Convention,  229 

Harvard  College,  55 

Hawaii,  independence,  314-315;  progress, 
315;  revolution,  459;  annexed,  476 

Hawkins,  Sir  John,  34 

Hayes,  Rutherford  B.,  nominated,  419; 
elected,  419-421;  charges  against, 
421;  end  of  reconstruction,  421;  and 
civil  service  reform,  429;  policies,  430 

Helper,  Hinton  Rowan,  "Impending 
Crisis,"  342-343 

Henry  VIII,  King  of  England,  42 

Henry,  Patrick,  First  Continental  Con- 


INDEX 


589 


gress,  127;  Governor,  153;  the  Consti 
tution,  176 

Hepburn  Rate  Law,  512 

Hessians,  137 

Homer,  i 

Homestead  Law,  292-293,  403 

Hood,  John  B.,  379 

Hooker,  Joseph,  367 

Hooker,  Thomas,  52 

House  of  Burgesses,  first  meeting,  40 

"House  of  Governors,"  522 

House  of  Representatives,  in  the  conven 
tion  of  1787;  174;  rules  under  Reed, 
445;  under  Cannon,  524-525 

Howe,  Sir  William,  132,  143;   146 

Hudson  Bay  Company,  74 

Hudson,  Henry,  explorer,  17-18 

Hudson  River,  discovery,  17 

Huerta,  Victoriano,  497 

Hughes,  Charles  Evans,  535 

Hull,  Isaac,  224 

Hull,  William,  224 

Hunter,  David,  on  emancipation,  363 

Hutchinson,  Anne,  51 

Illinois  Central  Railroad,  337 

Immigrants,  in  colonial  period,  98-101; 
Revolutionary  War,  164;  statistics, 
338;  opposition,  338-339;  in  Civil 
War,  381;  restriction,  433-434;  statis 
tics,  503;  individuals,  505 

Impeachment,  of  judges,  209;  President 
Johnson,  415 

"Impending  Crisis,"  342-343 

Impressment,  197;    215-217;    229-230 

Income  tax,  imposed,  462;  unconstitu 
tional,  463;  the  law  at  present,  519; 
constitutional,  519;  amendment  to 
Constitution,  524 

Indians,  attitude  toward  Europeans,  22; 
mode  of  life,  22-23;  physical  charac 
teristics,  23-24;  grade  of  civilization, 
24;  religion,  24;  native  plants,  fruits 
and  animals,  24-25;  various  tribes,  26; 
origin,  26;  slavery,  31-32;  Pequots, 
53;  King  Philip's  War,  54;  cordial 
relations  with  the  French,  85;  assist 
the  French  in  war,  89;  Indian  trade, 
105-106;  defeated  by  Daniel  Boone, 
135;  Iroquois,  defeated,  152;  as 
soldiers,  152;  defeated  in  Ohio,  192- 


193;  Indiana,  222;  removed  to  the 
West,  256-257,  275;  Illinois  and 
Wisconsin,  276;  Florida,  247,  277; 
wars  after  1865,  404-405;  reserva 
tions,  449-450;  present  policy,  450- 
451;  statistics,  451 

Initiative,  S25 

Injunctions,  462-463 

Internal  improvements  by  the  national 
government,  234-235;  opposition,  261— 
262;  by  states,  279;  modern,  492- 

493 

Interstate  Commerce  Commission,  439 
Intolerable  Acts,  126 
Inventions,  282-284;    402;    509 
Island  Number  10,  359 
Italy,  trouble  with,  457 

Jackson,  Andrew,  in  Florida,  247; 
Presidential  candidate,  1824,  251; 
elected  President,  266;  character,  268; 
and  nullification,  272-273;  bank  and 
other  policies,  273-277;  censured,  274 

Jamaica,  59 

James  I,  King  of  England,  44 

James  II,  King  of  England,  79 

Jamestown,  38 

Japan,  opening  up  of,  314;  trouble  with, 
500 

Jay,  John,  Second  Continental  Congress, 
136;  peace,  161;  Secretary,  166;  in 
Spain,  174;  Chief  Justice,  188;  Jay 
treaty,  197-198 

Jefferson,  Thomas,  Declaration  of  Inde 
pendence,  139;  Second  Continental 
Congress,  136;  supports  George  Rogers 
Clark,  153;  in  France,  174;  Secretary 
of  State,  183;  on  the  national  bank, 
187;  President,  207;  achievements  as 
political  leader,  207;  inaugural  address, 
207-208;  in  private,  life,  247 

Jesuits  in  America,  85 

Johnson,  Andrew,  nominated,  377;  his 
attempted  assassination,  381;  career, 
411;  reconstruction,  412-413;  im 
peached,  415;  seeks  nomination,  415- 
416 

Johnston,  Joseph,  surrenders,  379 

Johnstown,  Pennsylvania,  503 

Joliet,  'discoverer,  18;  his  map,  18-19 
and  frontispiece 


59° 


INDEX 


Jones,  John  Paul,  154 
Judiciary  Act,  188 

Kansas, 

Kentucky,   beginnings,    134;    statehood, 

193;   loyal,  356 
Key,  Francis  Scott,  227 
King,  Rufus,  constitutional  convention, 

174;  candidate,  246;   in  Congress,  247 
King's  Mountain,  battle,  158 
Klondike,  gold  discoveries,  468 
Knights  of  Labor,  436-437 
Know  Nothing  party,  339;  330 
Knox,  Henry,  184 
Knox,  Philander  C.,  496 
Kosciusko,  Thaddeus,  148 
Ku  Klux  Klan,  417-418 

La  Cosa  map,  9-10 

La  Verendrye  brothers,  discoverers,   19 

Labor  reformers,  418 

Labor-saving   machinery  in   Civil  War, 

405 

Labor  troubles,  Jackson's  time,  282 

Labor  unions,  399-400 

Lafayette,  Marquis  de,  148 

Lake  Erie,  naval  victory,  226 

Land  Grant  Railroads,  337;  deprived  of 
land,  448 

Lands,  Western,  168 

La  Salle,  Sieur  de,  18 

Laurens,  Henry,  161 

Lecompton  Constitution,   332-333 

Lee,  Charles,  144 

Lee,  Richard  Henry,  First  Continental 
Congress,  127;  motion  for  indepen 
dence,  139;  on  the  Constitution,  176 

Lee,  Robert  E.,  308,  362,  367,  368,  379, 

384-385 

Lewis  and  Clark,  20,  212 

Liberator,  288-289 

Liberal  Republican  party,  418 

Liberty  party.  291 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  Dred  Scott  Decision, 
332;  early  career,  333-334;  Lincoln- 
Douglas  debates,  334-335;  candidate, 
344;  elected,  346;  opposes  compromise, 
348;  first  inaugural,  350;  on  emanci 
pation,  363;  arbitrary  government, 
369-370;  renominated,  376;  doubts 
re-election,  377;  re-elected,  378;  assas 


sinated,  378-381;  career,  381-382; 
second  inaugural,  382;  at  Gettysburg, 
^382 

Lincoln,  Benjamin,  157;  Secretary,  166 

Literature,  287,  509 

Livingston,  Robert,  Declaration  of  Inde 
pendence,  139;  Secretary,  166 

Local  government,  in  New  England, 
114-115;  in  other  colonies,  115 

Lockwood,  Belva  A.,  nominated,  434 

Log  cabin,  243 

London  Company,  charter,  38;  loses  char 
ter,  40-41 

Long  Island,  battle,  143 

Longstreet,  James,  369 

Lookout  Mountain,  battle,  369 

Lopez,  Narcisso,  335 

Los  Angeles,  1910,  507 

Louisburg  captured  and  exchanged,  90; 
again  taken,  93 

Louisiana,  purchase,  210-211;   state,  212 

Lowell,  Massachusetts,  281 

Loyal  colonies,  133 

Loyalists,  distribution,  132-133;  denied 
suffrage,  136;  in  the  South,  157^  fate, 
162-163,  168;  169 

Lundy,  Benjamin,  288 

Lundy's  Lane,  battle,  226 

Lusitania,  532 

Lyon,  Nathaniel,  356 

Macdonough,  Thomas,  victory,  227 

Macon's  Bill  No.  2,  221 

Madison,  James,  Constitutional  con 
vention,  173;  "Notes,"  173;  Secre 
tary  of  State,  207;  President,  220;  re- 
elected,  225;  in  private  life,  247 

Magellan,  Ferdinand,  13-14 

Maine,  destroyed,  471 

Maine,  founded,  53;  union  with  Massa 
chusetts.  53;  statehood,  255 

Manila  Bay,  naval  battle,  472-474 

Mann-Elkins  Act,  513 

Manufacturing,  colonial,  108;  fostered 
by  tariff,  184;  during  European  wars, 
194;  effect  of  War  of  1812,  231-232; 
new  manufacturing  towns,  232-233; 
and  tariff  of  1816,  233;  consolidation 

395 

Marbury  v.  Madison,  208-209 
Marietta,  172 


INDEX 


59* 


Marion,  Francis,  157 

Marquette,  Jacques,  18 

Marshall,  John,  Chief  Justice,  204 

Martin  v.  Hunter's  Lessee,  259 

Mary,  Queen  of  England,  42 

Maryland,  settlement,  57;  Toleration 
Act,  57 

Mason  and  Dixon's  Line,  76 

Massachusetts,  settled,  48-50;  self-gov 
ernment  preserved,  68;  independent 
spirit,  69;  punishment,  70 

Maximilian,  in  Mexico,  375 

Mayflower,  45 

Maysville  Road,  274-275 

McClellan,  George  B.,  placed  in  com 
mand,  355;  in  West  Virginia,  356; 
before  Richmond,  361-362;  nominated, 

377 

McClure,  Robert,  discoverer,  20 

McCormick,  Cyrus  H.,  reaper,  284 

McCulloch  v.  Maryland,  257-258 

McDowell,  Irvin,  354 
-McKinley,     William,    McKinley     Tariff 
Law,  447;   nominated  and  elected,  464; 
renominated   and   re-elected   477-478; 
assassinated,  478 

Meade,  George  G.,  367 

Meat  Inspection  Act,  512 
t  packing,  407-408 

Memminger,  Charles  G.,  346 

Merchant  marine,  372 

Merritt,  Wesley,  in  Philippines,  474 

Mexico,  discovered,  14-15;  riches,  30; 
war,  304-307;  French  in,  375;  expul 
sion  of  French,  422;  revolution  since 
ipii,  496 

Militia,  whiskey  rebellion,  192 

Mining,  progress,  338 

Minneapolis,  1910,  507 

Minnesota,  360 

Missionary  Ridge,  battle,  369 

Mississippi  River,  discovery,  16 

Missouri,  admitted,  255-256;   for  union, 

355 

Mitchell,  John,  518 
Mobile  Bay,  378 
Mohammedans,  i 
Molasses  Act  of  1733,  107 
Monitor  and  Merrimac,  359-360 
Monmouth,  battle,  152 
Monroe,  James,  minister  to  France,  199; 


minister  to  Great  Britain,  217;  Secre 
tary  of  State,  220;  President,  246 
re-elected  President,  1820,  251 

Monroe  Doctrine,  origin,  249-250;  Mex 
ico,  375,  422;  in  Venezuela,  469,' 
danger,  476;  present  day,  493-498 

Monroe  treaty,  217 

Montesquieu,  Charles  de,  141 

Montgomery,  Richard,  131 

Morgan,  Daniel,  158 

Morgan,  John  Pierpont,  463;   511 

Mormons,  287-288 

Morris,  Gouverneur,  constitutional  con 
vention,  174 

Morris,  Robert,  superintendent,  166; 
constitutional  convention,  174 

Morristown  Heights,  camp,  145 

Moultrie,  William,  at  Fort  Moultrie,  132 

Mount  Vernon,  meeting  at,  172;  depart 
ure  of  Washington,  179 

Murfreesboro,  battle,  359 

Narvaez,  Pamfilo  de,  15 

National  Silver  party,  466 

Naturalization,  Act,  202;  English  con 
tention,  216;  twentieth  century,  504 

Navigation  Laws,  contents,  71;  working, 
107-108;  more  rigidly  enforced,  118 

Navy,  decreased,  208;  growth,  447; 
around  the  world,  498 

Negro  soldiers,  367 

Negro  suffrage,  506 

Neutral  Rights,  on  the  sea,  196;  accord 
ing  to  Jay  treaty,  198;  more  trouble, 
214;  settlement,  229-230 

Neutrality,  declared  by  the  United 
States,  195 

Nevada,  mines,  340 

New  England,  opposition  to  1812  War, 
228-229 

New  England,  Confederation,  formation 
and  working,  54;  proceedings,  54-55; 
Dominion  of,  77-80 

New  Hampshire,  founded,  52-53;  part 
of  Massachusetts,  53;  separate  colony 
70,80 

New  Haven,  founded,  52;  part  of  Con 
necticut,  70 

New  Jersey,  settlement,  72 

New  Jersey  plan,  constitutional  conven 
tion,  174 


592 


INDEX 


New  Orleans,  victory,  227-228;  1810,  238; 
captured,  359;  1910,  506 

New  Sweden,  65 

New  York  City,  colonial,  109;  growth, 
338;  draft  riots,  369;  public  improve 
ments,  492-493;  ipio,  507 

Nicaragua,  filibustering  expeditions,  336; 
Clay  ton-Bui  wer  treaty,  312;  Hay- 
Pauncefote  treaty,  489 

Nicolet,  Jean,  18,  20 

Non-importation,  in  colonial  times,  119, 
123,  127;  under  President  Jefferson, 
217 

Non-Intercourse  Act,  221 

North,  Lord,  Intolerable  Acts,  126; 
measures  of  conciliation,  137;  com 
promise,  148;  resignation,  161 

Northmen,  2-3 

Northwest  Passage,  search,  14-15;  dis 
covered,  20 

Nova  Scotia,  deportation  of  inhabitants, 
92-93;  loyal,  133 

Nullification,  272;  personal  liberty  laws, 
322-323;  negro  suffrage,  506 

Ohio,  bone  of  contention,  in  war,  91; 
settlement,  172;  statehood,  193 

Oakland,  507 

Oklahoma,  settlement  and  statehood,  449 

Orders  in  Council,  215;   repealed,  223 

Ordinance  of  1787,  171 

Oregon,  claims  of  the  United  States,  300; 
claims  of  the  British,  300;  immigra 
tion,  301;  campaign  1844,  302;  an 
nexed,  308;  anti-slavery,  317 

Ostend  Manifesto,  336 

Pacific  Railroad,  projected,  313;  North 
ern,  448;  merger,  512;  Union  Pacific, 
396-397;  scandal,  400-401;  union  with 
Southern  Pacific,  514 

Paine,  Thomas,  "Common  Sense,"  138; 
"The  Crisis,"  145,  162 

Pan-American  Congresses,  455 

Pan-American  Exposition,  Buffalo,  478 

Pan-American  Union,  455-456 

Panama  Canal,  early  history,  310;  later 
history,  489-492;  tolls,  490-491; 
French,  453-454 

Panama  Congress,  256 

Panama  Railroad,  310 


Paper  money,  Revolution,  150;  Jack 
son's  time,  279-280;  Civil  War, 
388-389 

Parker,  Alton  B.,  478 

Peace  Conference,  1861,  348 

Pendleton,  George  H.,  432 

Penn,  William,  75-76 

Pensions,  vetoed  by  Cleveland,  447; 
Dependent  Pension  Law,  447;  service 
pension,  524;  extension,  1912,  524 

Pennsylvania,  founded,  74-77 

Perry,  Oliver  H.,  226 

Pershing,  Genl.  J.  J.  498,  537 

Personal  Liberty  Laws,  323 

Peru,  discovered,  14;  riches,  30 

Petersburg,  376-377 

Petitions,  anti-slavery,  290 

Petroleum,  discovered,  339 

Philadelphia,  founded,  75;  colonial,  no; 
captured,  145;  and  the  Pennsylvania 
canal,  263;  Exposition,  402;  1910,  507 

Philip,  King  54 

Philippine  Islands,  acquired,  474;  insur 
rection,  477;  increased  self-govern 
ment,  483 

Phillips,  Wendell,  365 

Pickens,  Andrew,  157 

Pickett,  George  E.,  368 

Pierce,  Franklin,  Mexican  War,  308; 
President,  325 

Pike,  Zebulon  M.,  212-213 

Pinckney,  Charles,  constitutional  con 
vention,  174 

Pinckney,  Charles  Cotesworth,  constitu 
tional  convention,  174;  commissioner 
to  France,  201;  presidential  candidate, 
205,  213,  218 

Pineda,  Alonzo  de,  13 

Pirates,  of  Mediterranean  Sea,  213;  in 
America,  74,  78 

Pitt,  William,  94,  137 

Pittsburg,  foundation  of,  93-94;  1810, 
238;  railroad  strikes,  426;  IQIO,  507 

Pizarro  brothers,  conquer  Peru,  14 

Plymouth,  settled,  45 

Plymouth  Company,  charter,  38;  at 
tempts  settlement,  41-42 

Polk,  James  K.,  presidential  candidate, 
301;  elected,  303;  policies,  304 

Polo,  Marco,  4 

Ponce  de  Leon,  i? 


INDEX 


593 


Pontiac,  Conspiracy,  119 
Population,     in     colonial     period,     98; 
growth,    1810-1840,    238;      statistics, 

507-509 
Populist     party,    rise,     452;     measures, 

5^5~527 

Port  Hudson,  388 

Portland,  Oregon,  1910,  507 

Porto  Rico,  taken,  474;  new  government, 
483;  prosperity,  483-484 

Portuguese  voyages,  5 

Portuguese  America,  32 

Post  Office,  reforms,  in  Civil  War  times, 
387;  later,  520 

Powderly,  Terrence  V.,  436 

Prairie  country,  242-243 

Prescott,  William,  130 

President  of  the  U.  S.,  powers,  175 

Presidential  election,  1788-89,  179;  1792, 
191;  1796,  201;  1800,  205;  1804,  213; 
1808,  218;  1812,  225;  1816,  246;  1820, 
251;  1824,  251-252;  1828,  260;  1832, 
273;  1836,  291;  1840,  294-295;  1844, 
301-302;  1848,  318;  1852,  325;  1856, 
329-330;  1860,  343-346;  1864,  376- 
378;  1868,  415-416;  1872,  418;  1876, 
419-421;  1880,  430-431;  1884,  434; 
1888,  441-442;  1892,  452-453;  1896, 
464-467;  i goo,  477-478;  1904,  478- 
479;  1908,  470;  1012,  479-481;  1916, 

535 

Presidential  Succession  Act,  442 
Prevost,  Sir  George,  227 
Primaries,  direct,  526 
Prince  Henry  the  Navigator,  5 
Princeton,  battle,  145;   college,  112 
Pring,  Martin,  explorer,  37 
Privateers,     in     the     Revolution,     155; 

1812-1813,  228. 
Proclamation  of  1763,  133 
Proclamation  of  rebellion,  137 
Progressive  party,  480 
Prohibition  party,  420 
Prosperity,   after   1819,    278-279;     Civil 

War  times,  387;  1896-1907,  502-510 
Protestant  Reformation,  42 
Ptolemy,  2 
Public  lands,  liberal  disposition  of,  193; 

laws,  293 
Public  improvements,  Jefferson,  234-236, 

Adams,    261-262,    Jackson,    274-275; 


modern  doctrine,  492;  New  York 
State,  492;  New  York  City,  492-493 

Pulaski,  Count,  148 

Pullman  Works,  strike,  462 

Pure  Food  Law,  512 

Puritans,  origin  and  beliefs,  43;  difficul 
ties  with  King  Charles  I,  46-48;  emi 
gration  to  Massachusetts  48-49; 
self-government,  49-50;  education, 
55;  treatment  of  Indians,  53-54,  555 
intolerance,  56;  Quakers,  56;  witch 
craft,  56;  Revolution  in  England,  67 

Putnam,  Israel,  130 

Quakers,  beliefs,  74-75;  in  New  England, 

56;  in  Pennsylvania,  74-75 
Quebec,  captured,  95 
Quebec  Act,  contents,  126;  wisdom,  133 

Railroads,  beginnings,  264-265;  increase, 
279;  statistics,  337;  consolidation, 
394-395;  construction,  396;  abuses, 
438-439;  regulation  of  rates,  427; 
centralization,  511 

Raleigh,  Sir  Walter,  promotes  coloniza 
tion,  36;  in  South  America,  37 

Rambouillet  Decree,  221  { 

Randolph,  Edmund,  constitutional  con 
vention,  173;  Attorney  General,  184 

Ratification  of  the  Constitution,  176 

Reagan,  John  H.,  347 

Reaper,  284 

Recall,  525-526 

Reciprocity,  in  McKinley  Tariff  Act, 
447,  455;  defeated,  518 

Reclamation  Act,  521 

Reconstruction,  412-415;  Reconstruc 
tion  Act,  414 

Reed,  Thomas  B.,  445 

Referendum,  525 

Reforms,  political,  285-286;  social,  286; 
educational,  286-287;  religious,  287- 
288;  on  slavery,  280-291 

Religion,  in  Massachusetts,  55-56;  among 
the  colonies  in  general,  112-113 

Religious  persecution,  Plymouth,  42; 
Massachusetts,  50-51:  New  England. 
56;  Maryland,  57-58;  Pennsylvania, 

75 

Representation,  different  views,  120-121 
Reprisal  on  France,  201-202 


594 


INDEX 


Republican  party,  origin,  326-327 
Revere,  Paul,  128 
Revolutionary  War,  117-164 
Revolution  in  England,  Puritan,  67-68; 

1660,  69;    1688,  79-81 
Rhode  Island,  founded,  50;  government, 

5i 

Robertson,  James,  134 

Rockefeller,  John  D.,  339,  395,  513 

Rodney,  Sir  George,  159 

Roosevelt,  Theodore,  succession  to  presi 
dency  and  re-election,  478-479;  re- 
nominated,  480 

Root,  Elihu,  496 

Rosecrans,  William  S.,  368 

Routes  to  West,  240 

Russian  America,  65 

Samoan  Islands,  458 

San  Francisco,  early  growth,  310;  Cali 
fornia,  earthquake,  503;  exposition, 
503;  igio,  507 

San  Juan,  battle,  474 

Santiago,  battle,  474 

Santo  Domingo,  and    Monroe    Doctrine, 

495 

Saratoga,  surrender,  147 
Savannah,  Georgia,  founded,  81;  taken, 

157 

Schouten  van  HDHI,  17 

Schuyler,  Philip,  146-147 

Scott,  Winfield,  Mexican  War,  306;  Presi 
dential  candidate,  325 

Screw  propellers,  282 

Seattle,  1910,  507 

Secession,  spirit  of,  in  the  West,  170; 
threat,  344;  arguments  for  and  against, 
344-346;  carried  out,  346 

Second  Continental  Congress,  135-136 

Sectionalism,  250 

Sedition  Act,  202 

Senators,  election  of,  524 

Separatists,  beliefs,  43;  set  out  for 
America,  44;  arrival  in  America,  45; 
settlement  in  Plymouth,  45;  leaders, 
46;  democracy,  46 

Sera  pis,  155 

Seven  Years'  War,  struggle  for  the  inte 
rior,  90-91;  preliminary  phases,  91-93; 
belligerents  compared,  93;  military 
events,  93-95;  treaty  of  peace,  96 


Sevier,  John,  settler,  134;  Governor,  171; 
in  Congress,  220 

Seward,  William  H.,  Compromise  1850, 
321;  campaign-  1856,  330;  Dred  Scott 
Decision,  332;  campaign  1860,  344; 
cabinet,  351;  French  expelled  from 
Mexico,  422;  attempted  assassination, 
380;  Liberal  Republican,  418 

Sewing  machine,  282 

Seymour,  Horatio,  Civil  War,  365;  nom 
inated,  416 

Shafter,  William  R.,  474 

Shays's  Rebellion,  170 

Shenandoah  Valley,  early  settlement,  90; 
Civil  War,  378 

Sheridan,  Philip  H.,  Shenandoah  Val 
ley,  378 

Sherman,  John,  cabinet,  428;  seeks 
nomination,  431 

Sherman,  Roger,  Declaration  of  Inde 
pendence,  139;  constitutional  con 
vention,  174 

Sherman,  William  T.,  Chattanooga,  376; 
in  Georgia,  378-379 

Sherman  Anti-Trust  Law,  contents,  445- 
446;  enforced  by  Roosevelt,  512-513; 
by  Taft,  515-516;  by  Wilson,  514-516 

Sherman  Silver  Purchase  Act,  contents, 
446;  repealed,  460 

Shiloh,  battle,  358 

Shipbuilding,  in  colonial  period,  106; 
1793-1815,  203,  232 

Silver  coinage,  428-429,  466 

Slavery,  African,  beginning  in  America, 
31-32;  in  early  Virginia,  40;  in 
South  Carolina,  74;  historical  sketch, 
252-254;  debate  over  Missouri,  254; 
arguments  for  and  against,  341-342; 
opinion  of  Lincoln,  344;  prohibited  in 
territories,  364;  abolished,  381;  of 
Indians,  31 

Slave  trade,  in  the  Constitution,  254; 
described,  342;  treaty  with  Great 
Britain,  374 

Slidell,  John,  in  Mexico,  304;  Trent 
affairs,  373 

Smith,  Caleb,  cabinet,  351 

Smith,  John,  39 

Smyth,  Alexander,  224 

Socialist  Labor  party,  466 

Social  Democratic  party,  477 


INDEX 


595 


Socialism,  in  Jackson's  time,  286;  growth, 
437-438 

Soto,  Hernando  de,  16 

South  America,  independence  recognized, 
248-249;  mediation,  424 

South  Carolina,  early,  72-74;  opponent 
of  protective  tariff,  260-261;  seces 
sion,  346;  reconstruction  experiences, 
416-417 

Southern  States,  progress  since  1865, 
505-506 

Spanish  Armada,  36 

Spanish  America,  Peru  and  Mexico,  30; 
population  31;  Indian  slavery,  31; 
African  slavery,  31-32;  exclusiveness, 
32;  rivalry  with  England,  33 

Spanish- American  War,  471-474 

Specie  Circular,  292 

Speculation,  in  Jackson's  time,  279 

Spoils  system,  269 

Spokane,  1910,  507 

Spottsylvania,  battle,  376 

Squatter  sovereignty,  presidential  cam 
paign  1848,  318;  in  Kansas,  325-326, 
328 

St.  Eustatius,  conquered,  160 

St.  John,  John  P.,  nominated,  434 

St.  Leger,  Barry,  145 

St.  Louis,  1810,  238;    igio,  507 

St.  Paul,  1910,  507 

Stamp  Act  Congress,  119 

Stamp  Tax,  118-120 

Standard  Oil  Company,  512-514 

Standish,  Miles,  46 

Stanton,  Edwin  M.,  cabinet,  351;  re 
moved,  415 

Star  of  the  West,  347 

Stark,  John,  130 

State  governments,  new,  136-137 

Steamboats,  first,  236-237;  over  the 
Atlantic,  282 

Stephens,  Alexander  H.,  346 

Stephenson,  George,  264 

Steuben,  Baron  von,  148 

Stevens,  Thaddeus,  on  the  South,  413 

Stock  Exchange,  399 

Stony  Point,  151 

Strike,  anthracite  coal  miners,  516; 
Chicago,  437;  Colorado  coal  miners, 
517;  Cripple  Creek  miners,  517; 
Homestead,  453;  Lawrence,  Massachu 


setts,  517;  Paterson,  New  Jersey,  517; 

Pullman  works,  462;  railroad,  426 
Submarines,  532 
Sub-treasury  system,  293,  315 
Suffrage,    115,   136,   189,   285;    woman, 

527 

Sugar  Act  of  1764,  118 
Sullivan,  John,  152 
Sumner,  Charles,  on  Kansas,  329;  radical 

leader,  365;  on  the  South,  413;  Liberal 

Republican,  418 
Sumter,  Thomas,  157 
Supreme    Court,   organized,    175;     early 

influence,    188-189;     attack    on,    208; 

nationalizing         decisions,        257-259; 

changes,   276;    opposition  of  Jackson, 

276;    after  Dred  Scott  Decision,  332; 

unpopular  1896,  463 
Supreme  Court  of  the  World,  487-488 
Surplus  in  Treasury,  Jackson's  time,  278, 

292;   Cleveland's  time,  440 

Tacoma,  1910,  507 

Taft,  William  H.,  Governor  of  Philip 
pines,  482;  cabinet  officer,  479;  nom 
inated  and  elected,  1908,  470;  nom 
inated,  1912,  480;  view  of  Monroe 
Doctrine,  494 

Tariff  Laws,  Molasses  Act  of  i/jj,  107; 
Sugar  Act  of  1764,  118;  Townshend 
Acts  of  1767,  122-123;  I7$9>  184;  of 
1816,  232;  of  Abominations,  258-259; 
and  nullification,  271-272;  Compro 
mise  of  1833,  273;  1842,  297;  Walker, 
1846,  315;  Morrill,  1861,  372;  in  Civil 
War,  ?88,  1865-1884,  439;  not  low 
ered  by  Democrats,  440;  Cleveland's 
message,  441;  McKinley  Law,  446; 
Wilson  Act,  461;  Dingley  Law,  1897, 
468;  Payne- Aldrich  Law,  1909,  518; 
Underwood  Law,  1913,  519 

Taxation  of  colonies,  debated,  118-119; 
Act,  148-149 

Taxation,  under  the  Confederation,  167 

Taylor,  Zachary,  Mexican  War,  304-305; 
President,  318;  death,  322 

Tecumseh,  Indian  chief,  226 

Telegraph,  282 

Tennessee,  beginnings,  134;  statehood,  193 

Tenure  of  Office  Act,  enacted,  415; 
repealed,  443 


596 


INDEX 


Territorial  additions,  309 

Territorial  dependencies,  constitution 
ality,  484 

Territorial  expansion,  after  Mexican  War, 
298-309;  after  Civil  War,  422-423 

Texas,  immigration  to,  277;  indepen 
dence,  277-278;  annexation  argu 
ments  pro  and  con,  298-299;  campaign 
1^4,302-303;  annexed,  303 

Third  term,  Jefferson,  218;  Grant, 
430-431;  Roosevelt,  480 

Thomas,  George  H.,  Chickamauga,  368; 
against  Hood,  379 

Ticonderoga  and  Crown  Point,  in  Seven 
Years'  War,  94;  Revolution,  129,  147 

Tilden,  Samuel  J.,  nominated,  419; 
defeated,  420-421 

Tobacco,  early  culture  in  America,  40 

Toledo,  ipio,  507 

Toleration,  religious,  57 

Toscanelli,  2;  map,  3 

Town  meeting,  in  New  England, 
114-115 

Townshend  Acts,  122-123 

Trade  Commission  Act,  515 

Trade,  foreign,  twentieth  century, 
509-510;  routes  to  the  East,  4 

Travel  on  frontier,  240-242 

Treaties,  peace,  under  Wilson,  486-487 

Treaty,  Paris,  1763,  96;  France,  148, 
202;  Paris,  1783,  161-162;  Spain,  199; 
Barbary  States,  199;  Ghent,  1814,  229; 
Guadalupe  Hildalgo,  306-307;  Clay 
ton-Bui  wer,  311-312;  Washington, 
423;  Paris,  1898,  474;  Hay-Pauncefote, 
1901,  489;  Portsmouth,  487 

Trent  affair,  373 

Trenton,  battle,  144;  welcome  to  Wash 
ington,  179 

Trusts,  growth,  511-512;  regulation, 
512-516 

Tweed,  William  M.,  401 

Tyler,  John,  President,  297;  quarrel 
with  Whigs,  297;  on  Texas,  299;  peace 
conference,  1860,  348 

"Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,"  323-324 

Union,  of  colonies,  127;  of  states,  166 

Union  Labor  party,  442 

United  Labor  party,  442 

United  States  Christian  Commission,  386 


United     States     Sanitary    Commission 

385-386 
United  States  Steel  Corporation,  sir,  516 

Vaca,  Cabeca  de,  15 

Vallandigham,  Clement  L.,  365 

Valley  Forge,  camp,  150 

Van    Buren,    Martin,    President,     291; 

defeated,  294-295 
Vancouver,  20 

Van  Rennselaer,  Stephen,  224 
Venezuela,  boundary  dispute,  469;    and 

foreign  powers,  ipos-igoj,  494 
Verrazano,     Giovanni    da,    explorations, 

14;   welcome  by  Indians,  22 
Vespucius,  Americus,  voyages,  n;  Amer 
ica  named  in  his  honor,  1 1 
Vice    President    of    the    United    States, 

powers,  175 
Vicksburg,  taken,  368 
Vincennes,  captured,  153 
Virgin  Islands,  purchased,  535 
Virginia,  early,  37-41;   royalist  reaction, 

70;  education,  70-71 
Virginia     and     Kentucky     Resolutions, 

203-204 

Virginia  Plan,  174 
Virginins,  424 

Waldseemiiller,  Martin,  names  America, 
11-12;  his  map,  12 

Walker,  William,  filibustering,  336 

War  of  1^/2,223-230 

War  with  Germany,  530-553 

Warren,  Joseph,  130 

Washington,  George,  in  the  West,  91; 
Braddock's  defeat,  92;  First  Conti 
nental  Congress,  127;  Commander-in- 
chief,  130;  Long  Island,  143;  Trenton, 
Princeton  and  Morristown  Heights, 
144-145;  Philadelphia  campaign, 
145;  Valley  Forge,  150;  besieges  New 
York,  151;  York  town,  159;  end  of 
war,  162;  Shays's  Rebellion,  170;  con 
stitutional  convention,  173;  first  Presi 
dent,  179;  inaugural  address,  180; 
precedents  set  by,  180;  constitutional 
construction,  187-188;  aristocrat, 
189;  second  election,  191;  military 
power,  192-193;  foreign  affairs,  193- 
200;  Farewell  Address,  200 


INDEX 


597 


Washington,  District  of  Columbia,  capi 
tal,  1 86;   captured,  226 
Watch  Trust  Case,  514 
Watauga  River,  134 
Water  works,  280 
Wayne,  Anthony,  151 
Weaver,  James  B.,  nominated,  431  and 

453 

Webster,  Daniel,  in  Congress,  247; 
Hayne  debate,  270-271;  opposes  Jack 
son,  276;  Presidential  candidate,  291; 
Ashburton  treaty,  298;  compromise, 
1850,  320-321;  death,  324-325;  fili 
bustering  expeditions,  335 

Welles,  Gideon,  35 

West,  in  1815,  237-244;  laws  to  open  up, 
336;  growth  fostered,  403;  migration 
across  plains,  404 

West  Indies,  settlement,  58-59;  pros 
perity,  107;  loyal,  132;  trade  closed, 
195;  trade  opened,  278 

West  Virginia,  loyal,  356 

Western  Reserve,  168 

Western  Union  Telegraph  Company,  395 

Weymouth,  George,  37 

Whig  party,  291 


Whiskey  rebellion,  192 

"Wildcat  banks,"  279-280 

Wilderness,  battle,  376 

William  and  Mary,  King  and  Queen  of 

England,  79 
Williams,  Roger,  50-51 
Williamsburg,  taken,  361 
Wilmot  Proviso,  317 
Winslow,  Edward,  46 
Wilson,  James,  174 
Wilson,  Woodrow,  nominated  and  elected, 

480-481;  reelected,  535;  War  Message, 

appendix   IV 
Witchraft,  56 
World's  Fair,  Chicago,  461 
World's   richest   nation,   United   States, 

Sio 

Wright  brothers,  509 
Wyoming  Valley,  152 

"X,  Y,  Z"  affair,  201 

Yale  College,  in 

York  town,  surrenders,  159;   in  Civil  War, 

361 


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